Steam Oven Fruit and Nut Bread

a slice of fruit and nut bread that's been baked in a steam oven, with a smear of butter across the surface and the butter knife alongside

Steam Oven Fruit and Nut Bread

This fruit bread is much beloved in my house. Cinnamon-forward and packed with dried fruit and nuts, it rivals any store-bought artisan loaf and bakes beautifully using combi steam. Eat it fresh out of the oven, or toast it and serve with lashings of butter.

Prep Time20

Cook Time30

proofing time12 30

Total Time13 20

Course: Afternoon Tea, Breads, Breakfast, Morning Tea, Snack

Cuisine: Western

Keyword: fruit and nut bread, fruit and nut loaf, fruit bread, fruit loaf, steam oven bread, steam oven fruit loaf

Servings: large loaf 13x4"/32x10cm

Calories: 3029kcal

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups white bread flour I use bakers flour with a protein level of 11-12%; use all-purpose if that's all you have, it'll work ok here
2 tsp instant dried yeast or active dry yeast; equiv. to 1 x 7g sachet
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 3/4 cups water lukewarm, divided; you may need more or less depending on how dry your flour is and your climate/altitude
2/3 cup dried apricots roughly chopped, or cranberries
2/3 cup raisins roughly chopped
2/3 cup walnuts or other nuts, I love pecans and hazelnuts as alternatives
white bread flour extra, to flour surface and for shaping

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

Put all the dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer and stir to combine.
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour, 2 1/2 cups white bread flour, 2 tsp instant dried yeast, 2 tbsp granulated sugar, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground cloves
Attach the mixer’s dough hook and pour in 1 1/4 cups of the water, then turn the mixer on to low speed and mix until everything forms a soft, slightly sticky dough. You may need to add a little more water for the dough to come together properly.
1 3/4 cups water
Let the mixer run for 5-8 minutes after the dough comes together, until it's smooth and elastic.
When the dough is smooth, turn the mixer off. Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured surface and press it out into as large a rectangle as you can. Measurements don't matter here, you're just making as large a surface area as you can without the dough springing back on you.
white bread flour
Scatter the dried fruit and nuts over two thirds of the dough. Fold the remaining third over half the fruit and nuts, then fold that over the other third so you've got a three-fold rectangle with all the add-ins inside the dough. Press everything out again and repeat the folding. Repeat this flattening and folding into thirds once or twice more to distribute all the fruit and nuts evenly.
2/3 cup dried apricots, 2/3 cup raisins, 2/3 cup walnuts
Bring the dough together into a rough ball and put it into a clean bowl. Put it, uncovered, in your steam oven and set to steam or dough proving at 86⁰F/30⁰C. Leave until it's roughly doubled in size, about 30-40 minutes depending on which yeast you used and what your starting room temperature was.
After the first prove, scrape the dough onto a lightly floured surface again and press gently into a large rectangle. Fold it into thirds by lifting the short sides of the dough into the middle (I use a cheap plastic dough scraper to help me with lifting and folding the dough over without using too much flour). You'll now have a vaguely square piece of folded dough. Turn it around so one of the open sides is facing you, then roll it tightly and evenly away from yourself to make a fat spiral shape. You can sort of poke the sides back in as you roll so you end up with a nice and neat loaf.
white bread flour
Put the dough, seam side down, into a 13"x4" (32x10cm) loaf pan. Wrap the whole thing loosely in a plastic bag (or put a shower cap over the top of the tin!), and put it in the fridge overnight – 8-12 hours is about right though I've gone as high as 14 hours and it was fine.
After the second prove your loaf should have roughly doubled in size and the dough should spring back to shape when you gently press on the surface. If your finger leaves a big indent and the dough still seems ‘heavy’, it needs more time. If you've left it for too long, you'll find that when you poke the dough the whole lot deflates. You can still bake an overproved loaf but it won't rise as well in the oven, and will have a more crumbly texture because the gluten structure isn't as good.
Set your steam oven to Combi Steam, 400°F/200°C, 60% (high) humidity. Bake the bread for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350°F/180°C and bake until the loaf is golden brown all over, about 25 minutes more. If you turn it out of the pan, the base of the loaf should sound hollow when tapped. If you've got an instant-read thermometer you can check for temperature instead of doing the tap test; it should read 200-210°F/93.5-99°C in the center of the bread.
Remove from the oven, turn out of the pan and leave to cool before cutting. It will keep, covered at room temperature, for a day or two, but is best sliced and frozen after that, ready for toasting.

Notes

Makes one large loaf, approximately 2.5lb/1.1kg. PLEASE NOTE the nutrition facts for this recipe are for the whole loaf. You can divide them by the number of slices you cut to work out the nutrition facts for individual servings.
Bake the dough in two smaller pans if that's what you have; cooking time will be a few minutes less but not a lot less.
I’ve given instructions to make the dough in a mixer with dough hook, but you could mix and knead by hand. You'll have to knead the dough for 8-10 minutes once it comes together.
The dried fruit selection is up to you – I love apricots for their tang and raisins for sweetness, but you can swap out the volume of fruit for any others you like, such as cranberries, blueberries, tiny currants, figs or golden sultanas.
Same thing for nuts. I use whatever I've got in the pantry; usually walnuts or pecans but sometimes I luck out with hazelnuts left over from another recipe. You can use almonds too, though they are harder to cut through when the loaf is cooked.
You'll see the second rise here happens overnight in the fridge, which allows you to do all the hard work the day before, then enjoy the (literal!) fruits of your labor the next morning. The bread will have a deeper flavor and better texture thanks to that slower second rise, but if you want to do the whole recipe in a single day, you can do the second proof in your steam oven as well. Just pop in the formed loaf using the same settings you did for the first rise, and let it almost double in size, which will take anywhere from 25-40 minutes. Leave the bread in the oven when you swap the settings over to bake it. It'll finish rising and start baking as the oven heats up.
I love USA Pans and have a pullman loaf pan with a lid that I use for this recipe. I don't tend to put the lid on, but you can if you want to make a square loaf instead of one with a domed top.

Nutrition