Apple cider bread with apple chunks is crusty on the outside, moist inside and very tasty overall.
Apple everything
Whatever can you not do with apples in the cooking world? You can bake pies, tartes Tatin, apple cakes and strudels. You can make a gorgeous stuffing for porchetta or a roast duck. There are toffee apples, cinnamon apples and dried apples.
There is applesauce, apple marmalade and apple chutney. Waldorf salad, turnovers and crumble. There is appletiser and appletini (I’m so not sure about the last one though). With apples, you can keep the doctor away and make shrunken heads.
And of course you can make booze: cider, wine (apparently so) and calvados. I am not too keen on drinking any of those, but cider can certainly be used in bread making. And it works very well, just like beer.
Cider bread is common in Normandy, where it tends to be rye flour based. I follow the New York Times Cooking recipe with white and wholemeal flour, and the outcome is delicious.
Cold fermented dough
The dough is mixed and kneaded conventionally, with cider for the liquid element. It does make it easy work if you have a standing mixer, but even kneading by hand isn’t terribly hard – it’s nice, pliable dough. As soon as it’s springy, smooth and elastic, when it stops sticking to your hands or the standing mixer bowl, it’s ready to go into fridge, for cold retardation.
Cold retardation is in simple terms keeping the bread dough at various stages of production in the fridge. It is a useful method allowing you to fit the breadmaking process into your daily schedule: it’s not everything and all at once, with the bread baked late in the evening when its freshness and deliciousness will likely be wasted.
But of course it also benefits the dough and the bread: long and slow fermentation, decelerated by cold temperature, ensures the depth of flavour and improves the gluten structure and thus the crumb.
Cold store at various stages
The dough can be housed in the fridge at various stages of the process. In this instance it is mixed, kneaded and off it goes for overnight cold storage. The next morning it is processed further, shaped, proofed and baked (though it might be midday by then).
But it is also possible to shape a loaf and proof it in the fridge, to be baked the next morning. Or you can do both, which is the case with walnut Tartine, and I do often apply that approach to other sourdough recipes, to divide the breadmaking into manageable episodes.
Adding apples on day 2
In this particular recipe the dough spends the night in the fridge and on the next morning it needs to warm up a bit – otherwise it might be difficult to shape. Plus, the apple chunks added to the dough at this point might tear it and retain air pockets around them instead of becoming embedded in the softened dough.
The best way to incorporate the apples is to flatten the dough ball, sprinkle some diced apple over then fold it back, repeating until the apples are used up.
With the apples in the dough will need to rest and proof for about an hour.
Then it's time for the final shaping and a final proof in a banneton or a towel-lined bowl, at warm temperature.
Baking methods
Bread baking, as I’m sure you know, needs high temperatures and humidity. A baking clay cloche is very good, as is a Dutch oven – a cast iron or similar casserole dish with a lid, large enough to house a loaf. It needs to be preheated in the oven set to at least 240C/460F for at least half an hour.
Take good care handling it when preheated. The risen loaf is best turned carefully out onto a length of parchment, scored with a sharp knife or a baker’s lame, then transferred into the dish with the parchment.
If that’s how you bake it, uncover the dish for the last 20 minutes to let the bread brown.
If you don’t have any such equipment, you can bake it on a pizza stone or a heavy baking tray, and spray the inside of the oven with water as the loaf goes in.
This cider bread is delicious, very moist and squidgy in a nice way, perfect toasted.
More easy bread recipes
Easy deli style homemade rye bread leavened with yeast: it is perfectly possible to make deli style bread without a sourdough starter. Great for sandwiches and excellent for toasting.
Savoury courgette bread recipe for one of the best easy sandwich loaves. Courgette bread flavoured with herbs is great for sandwiches, it slices beautifully and toasts better.
Beetroot bread with grated raw beetroot, flavoured with caraway and studded with sunflower seeds and an occasional raisin. A proper loaf, good for slicing, toasting and sandwiches, with spectacular colour of the crumb and excellent, moist and chewy texture.
More baking with apples recipes
Wholegrain seeded loaf with apple and onion: this multi-seed bread uses granary or malted flour and has great flavour thanks to the grated apple and chopped onion added to the dough.
Spiced brown apple cake with cocoa, probably the easiest apple cake recipe of the 'mix and bake' kind. It's fragrant with cinnamon and cloves, dark brown with cocoa and dotted with pale chunks of apples.
Apple and cheese scones are really tasty. Made with Cheddar cheese and Bramley or similar cooking apples, this recipe is quick, rewarding, and minimum effort.