Recipes for fruit cocktail bread can help you create moist and flavorful bread that your whole family will love.
Bring The Flavor
We all know that fresh bread has a great flavor. Once you have made plain bread a couple of times, you'll be ready to move up to a more adventurous recipe. Most recipes for fruit cocktail bread use honey as a sweetener, which not only adds more depth to the flavor of the bread, but it makes the bread more healthful for you. You will also find that a lot of recipes for fruit cocktail bread make ample use of spices. When adding fruit cocktail to a bread recipe, you will want to add some cinnamon or nutmeg or anise. I even tried it with a little bit of cardamom. I liked it, but my test subjects were a bit iffy about it so I'm leaving it out of this recipe.
What Kind of Nut are You?
Adding fruit cocktail to your bread recipe adds a lot of moisture to the loaf. This is not a bad thing, but it does leave you some room to add some crunch. Whatever nut you happen to like is the best one to go with. I have tried macadamia nuts and I tried pine nuts and I liked the pine nuts. If you like walnuts or pecans, you can definitely go with either of them. Just be sure to give them a rough chop before adding them to your dough. If you want to add another layer of complexity to the flavor of your bread, toast the nuts before adding them.
It is Not a Fruitcake
There are many differences between fruitcake and fruit cocktail bread. The first and most obvious is that one is a cake and the other is a bread. Your fruit cocktail bread should be lighter than a fruitcake and, since you are using canned fruit cocktail, you will find the fruit is less chewy than the dried fruit bits found in fruitcake. I did find that my fruit cocktail bread was good as a side dish for tea and I liked it very much with hibiscus tea.
Recipes For Fruit Cocktail Bread
The liquid that the fruit cocktail comes packed in is sweetened and is a great medium to bloom your yeast. If you like, you can add your honey to this liquid before you add the yeast and bloom it that way, or you can hold the honey back and add it directly to your dough, either way will work.
Ingredients
You will need:
- 1 package of active dry yeast
- 1 can fruit cocktail (about 14 -15 ounces)
- 3 1/4 cups bread flour
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 2 tablespoons melted butter
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions
- Using the liquid from the fruit cocktail (so you don't have to use a sugar and water mixture and you can get more fruit cocktail flavor into your bread), dissolve the yeast in the liquid.
- As the yeast blooms, mix the salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger with the bread flour.
- Slowly add the yeast water to the flour.
- Add in the honey, pine nuts, and butter to the dough and knead together.
- Add the fruit cocktail and knead the dough gently until the fruit is thoroughly incorporated.
- Spray a large bowl with non-stick spray and place the dough in the bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm draft free place until it has doubled in size.
- Punch the dough down and then either form into loaves or place in two loaf pans that have been sprayed with non-stick spray.
- Let the dough rise again.
- Bake in a 350 degree oven for about a half hour or until done.
- Let cool.
- Serve with butter and honey.
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