Cranberry Orange Bread

The weather has turned awfully cold again after a slightly “warmer” week. It was difficult to climb out of bed but everyone needed to get going. After Ro-Ri San and boys had left, I decided it was time to bake another loaf of bread. This should warm up the kitchen and lift up spirits. The fragrance of fresh bread drives the cold winter away!

This recipe is from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Bread Machine Baking. This cookbook has been my constant companion ever since Ro-Ri San bought me the bread machine 6 or 7 years ago. I have tried many recipes out of this book and they are all good. The only change I made was to omit the sugar glazing.

Cranberry Orange Bread
½ cup water
½ cup orange juice (juice from one orange)
1 egg
3¼ cups unbleached white bread flour
1 tbsp non-fat dry milk
3 tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp rapid-rise active dry yeast
2 tsp grated orange zest
⅓ cup dried cranberries
¼ cup pecans, chopped

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Pour water, orange juice, and egg into bread machine pan. Sprinkle flour over the water. Add milk, sugar, salt, butter, and zest in separate corners of the bread pan. Make a shallow indentation in the center of the flour and add the yeast. Set the bread machine to basic setting, medium crust. Press Start. Add cranberries and pecan when the machine beeps, or after the first kneading. Remove bread from the pan at the end of the baking cycle and turn out onto a wire rack.

Note: I like to remove the kneading paddle (an attachment to the base of the pan) when the bread is done with the final kneading to prevent a big hole forming at the bottom when you try to remove it after baking.

The water, orange juice, egg, flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in the bread pan…

Here are the rest of the ingredients. The egg is already in there…

The bread pan is snapped into the machine. The first kneading of 10 minutes begins. The dough is then allowed to rise for 20 minutes.

The second kneading is 15 minutes. Last five minutes of this kneading, the machine beeps to indicate that it is time to add the cranberries and pecans. This is to keep the nuts and fruits intact.

The machine continues to knead the dough and it will be left to rise for another 20 minutes. There will be a 30 seconds punch down, after which, I remove the kneading paddle. The bread is left to rise for 55 minutes and then it will start baking.

Just before baking…

It’s done! It smells so good in here! The citrus scent fills the kitchen…