Candied Fruit Bread with Bread Maker

The recipe that Beatriz brings us today, from To Be Gourmet, makes me very excited, for two reasons. The first is that it's a recipe made with the bread maker, which I have a special fondness for: I've used it a lot, to the point of making bread in it daily, and it also helps me when making jams (it has a special program for that, and it saves me from having to stir!).

The second reason is that, although I've tried many of the bread recipes from the booklet that comes with the bread maker (with many and varied delicious bread recipes, as well as some for cakes, pizza base or jam), I've never really explored it. And without a doubt Beatriz encourages me to do so with this delicious fruit bread, which will be a hit at gatherings with friends and family!

I'm delighted with the Moulinex bread maker that I've had at home for a few months. I use it every week to make homemade sandwich bread for the children's lunches, brioche to serve when we have coffee. Tuesday mornings are a regular friends' coffee day, and it's usually at my house. I've also tried making cake from time to time, and more frequently milk bread and small baguettes.

Now that, with Christmas approaching, I’m starting to see candied fruit in stores, I've wanted to try making a sweet bread with bits of cherries, pear, orange, plum… and I have to confess that it has dethroned my beloved brioche that has given us so many pleasures.

Pallarès kitchen knife

It's true that brioche is a bit quicker, since in this case you have to spend about ten or fifteen minutes chopping the glazed fruits, but... what are ten or fifteen minutes after all!? That's the thing with this kitchen robot, it has spoiled us….

Ingredients

• 280 ml of milk
• 60 g of butter
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 500 g of strong flour
• 20 g of fresh yeast (I use Levital )
• 150 g of candied fruit

Preparation

We place the pan of the bread maker on a precision scale (I do it this way because it's more convenient to add the exact amounts and zero the previous weight without having to dirty anything more than the pan itself). We add the milk, then the softened butter, the salt and the sugar.

Next the flour and the yeast, we insert the pan into the bread maker and select the milk bread program, which in the case of the Moulinex is number 4.

The machine starts working. Meanwhile, we chop the fruits and set them aside until about half an hour after starting, when it beeps. We dust them with flour so they don't sink to the bottom at the moment of baking.

When the beep sounds that's when we can open the bread maker to access the pan and sprinkle the small fruits onto the dough, you can see how the paddles knead and the fruits gradually integrate into the mixture.

We close it again and wait for the program to finish. The time will vary depending on the size of the loaf (three sizes are offered and I selected the smallest which is considerable) and also on whether we want a lighter or darker crust. In our case, (light crust) it's two hours and fifty minutes.

Moulinex bread maker

When finished we let it cool a bit before removing the bread. As it usually sticks a little to the paddles (the ones that perform the kneading effect) I usually turn them with gentle right/left movements at the base of the pan (since the mechanism protrudes a bit) and that way we manage to loosen them from the bread and make unmolding easier.

All that's left is to wipe the pan with a damp cloth and store it for another occasion. That simple and easy.

And our bread, a delight and a way to look like royalty in front of our guests or our family.