Fall means APPLES! Lots and lots of apples! Right now, your local Walmart stores have so many varieties of Apples to choose from, and they are amazingly priced! To make the following recipe, we picked HoneyCrisp apples, but you can choose whichever one is your favorite!

My husband loves apples and loves to bake, so I gave this post up to him. I’m sure you’ll love what he posted.. We sure did!

 

Without further ado.. Here is my hubby and his Apple Pull Apart Bread:

My love affair with apples goes way, way back.  When I was very young, there was an apple farm near the area where I lived where you picked your own apples.  We would pick a few large paper grocery bags of Rome and Jonathan apples and bring them home to make pies from.  A healthy amount of them would be consumed sliced and dipped in crunchy peanut butter too.

Now with kids of my own, we try to find different baking recipes with apples.  My kids are not typically fond of pie (crazy, I know!), so we don’t eat a ton of apple pie.  While one of the kids is a Granny Smith fan, the other is more of a Honey Crisp fan.  I’m a big fan of Fuji apples and my wife likes them all.  We have in the past made cinnamon monkey bread, and I thought making an apple version would be delicious.

I started with a simple bread recipe and figured out where I could add some apples.

4 cups flour (plus extra for kneading)

2 ½ teaspoons dry yeast

¾ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup water

½ stick of butter, melted

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 teaspoons sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1 apple, cored and peeled.

1 cup of cinnamon/sugar mixture for topping

1 cup of milk or apple juice

 

I made this in a bread machine using the dough setting.  You may need to modify the process a little depending on your equipment.

Start by proofing the yeast.  Add two tablespoons of sugar to one cup of water at 115F into the bread pan and stir well.  Once the sugar is in solution, add 2 ½ teaspoons of dry yeast.  Sprinkle the yeast to try to cover the surface as well as possible, but don’t stir at all.  Let the yeast sit for 10-15 minutes.

Cut your apple in pieces.  Place one half into a food processor and add 2 teaspoons of sugar and the ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon.  Chop up the apples to the desired consistency.  I left mine fairly chunky.  Be careful not to make applesauce here.

Check your yeast, it should look foamy or creamy at this point.   Next, add in the butter and the ½ of the chopped apple mixture.  Add the flour and salt and start the dough cycle on the bread machine.

Once the dough cycle has completed on your machine, remove the dough and place on a lightly floured surface.  Add small amounts of flour as needed and knead into the dough.  Once your dough is elastic enough and no longer sticks to your hands, add the vegetable oil to a large mixing bowl and coat the dough.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for at least an hour or until it has doubled in size.

Take the dough out of the bowl and place onto a lightly floured surface.  Cut the dough into two equal pieces and separate them.  Continue cutting the dough in half into smaller pieces until you reach your desired size.  I try to make the pieces about the size of a nickel.

Once the dough is cut, preheat the oven to 425F.  Place the apple juice or milk into a bowl and add some of the cinnamon and sugar topping to another bowl.  Place the dough pieces one at a time into the liquid and roll it into the topping mixture and then place into a bundt pan. (You can substitute any pan).  After you have covered the pan with a layer of dough, sprinkle some of the chopped apples over it.  Continue to repeat the dough and apple mixture layers until you run out of each.

Place the pan into the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until the top starts to turn golden brown.  When done, remove from oven and cool.  Remove from pan and serve.

Feel free to change the recipe as you go.  It’s always slightly different for us, but we enjoy the variety (or the kids just eat any baked goods).