Golden Egg Bread with Dried Fruit

The smell of fresh baked bread is aromatherapy for me–right up there with fresh cut grass. Wonder if you can buy it as a room fragance or scented candle–like new car smell or cinnamon apple pie. Now that I think about it, I’ve never seen it. Guess I will keep baking.

Golden Egg Bread is excellent for eating out of hand  the day it is made. Perfect for bread pudding or toast on day 2 and 3, if it lasts that long. It is not a chewy or rustic style bread but soft and somewhat sweet with a tender crumb.

I love eating this bread as part of a sandwich. Good with turkey or ham and Durkee’s Famous Sauce.

It can transform chicken salad or ham salad into a special treat suitable for a brunch, luncheon or shower.

I used it in this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection, a delicious variation of bread pudding. The Mother’s Day crowd at my house loved it.  More details here.

You could make this bread without it, but dried fruit takes it from the blue ribbon category to grand champion-purple-ribbon status.  Below you see it with dried cranberries.  In the top picture, I used dried cherries.  Raisins, dates, or dried blueberries would also be worthy choices.

One observation in regards to adding the dried fruit to the dough: If added at the beginning along with the other ingredients, the bread will be somewhat darker in color (seen in top photo) with a  moister texture (say that 3 times real fast). My husband asked if it contained whole wheat (which I imagine would be a wonderful substitution for part of the flour). Adding fruit at the end of the kneading process preserves the integrity of the fruit resulting in whole fruit pieces and a lighter color as seen in picture below.  The choice is yours.

Golden Egg Bread with Dried Fruit

Ingredients:
3/4 cup water
2 eggs
6 tablespoons corn oil (I used walnut oil)
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2/3 cup dried cranberries, dried cherries or raisins
3 cups bread flour (+)
2 1/4 teaspoons instant or bread machine yeast or 1/4 ounce pkg active dry yeast

Directions:
First: Place ingredients in bread machine pan in order given. (If desired, add the fruit at the end of the kneading cycle–see discussion above.) See tutorial here if you are inexperienced with a bread machine. Add additional flour 1 tablespoon at a time if necessary to make dough thick enough to make a ball and barely clean the sides.

Second: Set  machine on dough cycle. When complete, dough should be doubled in size. If not, let it continue to rise in the machine.

Third: Remove from pan and roll  into rectangle shape with the short dimension slightly longer than your pan. Starting with long side, use your hands to roll into a cylinder shape. Tuck ends under and carefully place roll in a 9 x 4-inch loaf pan. Cover loosely with a clean towel and allow to rise in warm place until almost double. (May take as long as an hour or more.)

Fourth: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake until cooked through and crust is golden brown–approx 45 minutes. If necessary, cover with aluminum foil during last third of cooking time to protect from over browning. Internal temperature will reach 180-190 degrees when it is done. Let sit on the counter 5 minutes before removing from pan. Cool on a cooling rack.

Adapted from One Hundred Years of Bread by Sidney Brockman Carlisle.

If you enjoy fruity yeast bread, you might like these too:

Banana Whole Wheat Yeast Bread

Iced Orange Yeast Rolls