I know what you’re thinking. Bread is hard work. Bread takes too much time. Bread requires commitment.
You’re right. Bread is all of these things. Bread is hard work, but there are ways to make it much easier. It takes time, but much of that is hands off while it rises. Bread takes commitment, but it’s 100% worth it! There is literally nothing like cutting into fresh baked bread that you’ve made with your own two hands. When that bread ALSO includes perfect swirls of a homemade apple and cinnamon filling… I mean… Talk about a return on your investment!
This particular bread may be the best thing I’ve ever baked and eaten. I devoured half a loaf before I even knew what had happened! The general theory is close to how you’d make a cinnamon roll, but the dough isn’t as sweet.
Don’t adjust your dial here! That is indeed a box of mashed potatoes in that picture! Let me tell you, I had the hardest time trying to find this in the grocery store. I was clueless. No judgement here, but I’ve honestly never bought potato flakes. I prefer the real thing, however, there is definitely a time and place for dehydrated potatoes, and that place is bread!
Before we dive into the “how to,” let me just say that I actually did the shaping and twisting of the loaves totally wrong! I legitimately didn’t realize my mistake until I started typing up the instructions for the recipe. I feel like a total dope, but my bread still turned out, well, totally dope! So, you could do what I did or you could do what King Arthur tells you to do. Either way, you’re going to end up with two awesome loaves of bread!
Step one is mixing everything together. I use my stand mixer for bread pretty exclusively right now, but if you have a bread machine (I also do, I just don’t ever use it!) you can haul that bad boy out of wherever you’ve got it stored! You can also knead by hand. Regardless of the way you’re going to knead your bread, when you mix this together initially, do it with a spatula. Add wet to dry and stir together until everything is combined, then leave it alone for a half hour.
You can skip this step if you don’t have time, but let’s be honest, you’ve committed yourself to a fairly lengthy process already, so what difference is this half-hour going to make? On the other hand, it makes all the difference NOT to skip it. Those potato flakes are literally designed to take in liquid and expand, so letting it do what it was put on this earth to do is going to result in dough that is easier to knead, which will then help with gluten development, and ultimately better bread.
You want the dough to double in size. Rise time is anywhere between 1.5-2 hours, and this depends on the temperature of your kitchen. There’s no “optimal” here. Of course, a warmer environment will get you the fastest rise, but lower temp will get you a better flavor. No surprises here, I like the slower, more time consuming path. For better or worse, that’s just who I am as a person!
At some point during the rise time, make your apple filling so it’s cooled and ready for the next step. Speaking of who I am as a person, I definitely waited until the very last moment to do mine, so I ended up trying to quickly cool the filling by sticking it in the freezer and stirring it a lot. I don’t recommend my way on this, but there’s no use changing who you are on the inside.
I mentioned earlier that the “construction” of the bread was a bit similar to making cinnamon rolls. You divide the dough in half and roll each into a rectangle. Spread half the filling on each, and then roll the dough up. It’s easier to show the steps in photos than describing:
This is where my path to bread, uh… “diverged” from the one well-trodden. That is to say, I did it wrong. It was fine. It tasted good, but I had some issues to overcome (that I created myself by not following directions.) Feel free to do it the way the recipe actually says to do it instead of the way I did it. I promise I won’t take it personally! 😉
Here’s the messed up way I did things!
What should be happening in your kitchen is that you have two halves split down the length of the dough to expose the apple filling layers in the cut-section. If you do things the right way, your loaves won’t be a squat as mine, so there will be more twists. If all of this feels too complicated for you, you could cut the rolled up log into 2″ chunks with a serrated knife and bake them like cinnamon rolls. Add the optional glaze, and eat them just like cinnamon rolls too! (For me, that means hoarding them all to myself and eating them at midnight in front of the TV…)
From here, there’s just a short, tiny, one-hour rise until the loaves appear puffy, then bake! Don’t stick them in, set your timer and go, though. Mine got very brown in a short period of time. I caught them just before catastrophe! If that happens to you, just tent them with aluminum foil and go about your business for the rest of the time. You can check doneness with a meat thermometer if you are really that particular about it. (I did, but for science!)
They smelled SO good! Like, mouth-watering, Thanksgiving-pie-but-it’s-bread good. Then you have to wait an hour. Life is not fair, folks. Also, I started too late in the day and by the time I was done, it was time to go to bed, so I had to wait ALL NIGHT! When breakfast rolled around, though… oh my! Good thing this makes two loaves! Needless to say, there was no time to whip up a glaze, and it didn’t need it. Traditional cinnamon rolls can be too sweet sometimes, but this dough and filling was the perfect balance.
I can never truly say that breads will make it into “the rotation” of desserts at my house, but if there was ever a reason to spend a day on bread (and to use that box of instant potatoes that will never get used for any other reason), this Apple-Cinnamon Bread does the trick!
Cinnamon-Apple Bread
A soft, not too sweet bread that's perfect with a cup of coffee for breakfast or topped with a quick icing for dessert! Recipe from King Arthur Flour
Ingredients
- For the Dough
- 3 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1/2 cup + 1Tbsp Dried Potato Flakes
- 3 Tbsp Granulated Sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp Rapid Rise Yeast
- 1 1/4 tsp Salt
- 3 Tbsp Butter, softened
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 Lg. Egg
- 1 cup + 2 Tbsp Lukewarm Milk
- For the Filling
- 1 Cup (170g-227g) peeled, grated apple
- 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
- 1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
- 3 Tbsp Cornstarch
- 1/8 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Cinnamon
- For the Glaze (optional)
- 1 Cup Confectioner's Sugar
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1/8 tsp Salt
- 2 to 4 Tbsp Heavy Cream
Directions
- Step 1 Whisk together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer). Add the butter, vanilla, egg, and milk and mix with a spatula until a shaggy dough forms. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes to allow the liquid to absorb into the flour and potato flakes
- Step 2 Knead the dough, either by hand or using a mixer (you can also use the dough setting on a bread maker to replace this whole step!) until it’s smooth and soft, though still slightly sticky. Place the dough in a greased bowl, turning to coat. Cover the bowl and let rise until it’s almost doubled in bulk, about 1.5-2 hours (time depends on the temperature of your kitchen)
- Step 3 While the dough rises, toss grated apple with lemon juice in a saucepan. Whisk together sugar, cornstarch, salt, and cinnamon and add to the apples, stirring to combine. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until the apple starts releasing its juices. Increase the heat to medium and bring to a simmer. Simmer and stir until the mixture thickens to the point where drawing a spatula across the bottom of the pan leaves a track that is slow to fill back in. Remove from the heat, and set aside to cool to room temperature
- Step 4 To assemble the loaves, Gently deflate the risen dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured or greased work surface. Divide the dough in half. Roll the first half into a 10″x12″ rectangle. Spread half the filling over the rolled-out dough, leaving a 1/2″ margin clear of filling along the sides
- Step 5 Starting with the long side, roll the dough into a log and seal the edges. Using a bench knife or pizza cutter, cut the log in half LENGTHWISE (not in the middle like I did!!). Place the half-logs, filled side up, side by side on a well-greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Keeping the exposed filling side up, twist the two logs together, working from the center to each end and pinching the ends together. Repeat with second piece of dough. Cover twists lightly and set them aside to rise for 1 to 2 hours. They should be puffy, but not doubled in bulk
- Step 6 Bake the loaves in a preheated 350F oven for 30 to 40 minutes until they are lightly browned. Check the loaves after 20 minutes and tent with aluminum foil if they are browning too quickly. Fully baked loaves will register about 190F on a digital thermometer (make sure to position in the bread, not the filling)
- Step 7 Remove from the oven and cool for at least an hour before serving (or glazing, if you are using the glaze)
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