Cranberry Orange Bread Recipe and Tutorial

This bread is reason enough alone to buy a bread machine if you don't already have one.  Cranberry Orange Bread is great sliced right out of the machine slathered with butter and is fabulous toasted for breakfast.

A packet of yeast is pictured, but you only use 1 3/4 tsp. of it.

Bread Machine Cranberry Orange Bread

1 cup water (between 77-85 degrees F)
1/3 cup no-sugar added cranberry juice (between 77-85 degrees F)
1/3 cup nonfat dry milk
1/3 cup orange marmalade (room temperature)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. sugar
2 tbsp. butter (room temperature)
3 3/4 cups bread flour
1 3/4 tsp. bread machine or instant yeast
3/4 cup dried cranberries

1. Measure all ingredients except cranberries into baking pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Insert pan into the bread machine.

2. Select Sweet Cycle and 2-pound settings.

3. Add cranberries at the "add ingredient" signal.

4. Remove immediately from baking pan when done and let cool 15 minutes before slicing.

  Click here for printable format

Because you only use a small amount of the cranberry juice, you can freeze the rest, and it will keep indefinitely.  I freeze it in the original container and set it out to thaw a few hours before I'm ready to make the bread.  After a third cup has liquified, I return the rest of the juice to the freezer.

*Recipe from Washburn, Donna and Heather Butt.  300 Best Bread Machine Recipes. Toronto, Ontario: Robert Rose, Inc., 2010:  p.44 

 Bread Machine 101 for Fruit Breads:

I sometimes have to add additional flour to this recipe during the beginning of the second knead cycle--a tablespoon at a time.  I place a plate holding a silicone spatula, a tablespoon, and extra flour by the machine before I start it.  Dough with nuts or fruit in it (like this one) needs to be a bit stickier than regular bread dough in order to help the nuts or fruit stay incorporated in the bread.  That being said, this dough will stick to the side of the pan, but you know you've got enough flour in it when it pretty easily pulls away from the side with a spatula.  

Here is the bread dough at a good consistency.  It is slightly sticking to the side of the pan, but you can see that there is very little dough sticking elsewhere:

At the "add ingredient" tone, I added the cranberries.  Here is a photo after I first put them in and then another photo after they had started incorporating into the bread.  I used my spatula to help the machine mix the cranberries into the dough:

For my bread machine, the dough is shaped at 1 hour, 52 minutes.  If I'm in the kitchen and hear the machine kick on to shape the dough around that time, I always lift the lid quickly, reposition the dough into the middle of the pan so that it rises evenly, and then close the lid. This will not diminish the rising/baking at all.   If I don't happen to catch the machine at that time, my machine does a pretty good job of leaving the dough in the middle of the pan.  It might not rise quite as evenly, but it will still look nice.  Here is the dough after I repositioned it in the middle of the pan and also a photo of it when it has risen some and only has 45 minutes left to bake!

Done! :)