Apricot Breakfast Bread Recipe

This tart and slightly sweet fresh apricot yeast bread made with dried blueberries, is perfect for an afternoon coffee or tea break.

I’m known for my impulsive grocery store buys and it only comes becomes more impulsive as summer fruit starts to appear at the stores. Blueberries and apricots are the first things I start to buy when they appear, and all of sudden I have too much fruit and not enough time to eat it all before it goes bad. This is when I start baking up my apricot blueberry coffee cake, apricot, cherry and plum pie or my blueberry Swedish cake. But lately I’ve been diving deep into bread baking and I knew I wanted to make some sort of yeasted bread with the apricots. A simple modified brioche bread and I have this braided apricot yeast bread with dried blueberries.

Making this bread looks more complicated that it is! There’s no complicated braiding, even if it looks that way. It’s just laying strip of dough over strips of dough.

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First make an enriched dough, similar to a brioche bread. This means you combine some melted butter with milk and add in dry yeast to dissolve. Stir in an egg, vanilla and a dash of almond extract to the liquid.

Finish making the dough by mixing and kneading flour and a little bit of sugar with the liquid. Let it rise until double.

While the dough is rising, make the apricot filling by chopping up the apricots and mixing it with dried blueberries, some spices, vanilla and a little honey. Set it aside to let the apricots become juicy and for the dried blueberries to soak up some of the liquid.

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Once the dough has risen, this is where it gets fun! You roll out the dough on a piece of parchment paper into a rectangle. Then you mix a tablespoon of cornstarch into the filling and spread it into the center of the dough.

Cut the sides of the dough into 1-inch wide strips, and then lay those strips over each other, forming a braided bread.

Move the whole thing to a baking sheet. Let it rise again until the dough is puffy, then brush with an egg wash, sprinkle with decorative sugar, and bake.

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I use Swedish pearl sugar on top of this bread, which is sometimes called nib sugar. You can find it at specialty stores, occasionally at Ikea and online (<– affiliate link). Swedish pearl sugar is white flaky sugar that doesn’t easily dissolve. It is used on top of Swedish cinnamon roll and cardamon knots, as well as a decorative topping for a number of baked goods.

Some folks substitute crushed sugar cubes for pearl sugar. But you can also use regular white sugar, sparkling sugar or turbinado sugar (sometimes called Sugar in the Raw) as a substitute if you don’t feel like buying it, or tracking it down.

Don’t confuse Swedish pearl sugar with Belgian pearl sugar. Belgian style pearl sugar is large chunks of pearl sugar and isn’t meant for decorative use like the Swedish style. You can use Belgian style sugar, but you should crush the Belgian sugar into much smaller pieces before using. Just place the Belgian pearl sugar in a freezer Ziploc bag and then crush it with a rolling pin or heavy skillet. Belgian pearl sugar is most often used in Belgian Liege waffles.

Tom Aikens' Apricot Bread & Butter Pudding

I use dry blueberries in this recipe because dried fruit will help absorb some of the liquid that the fresh apricots will shed and the intense flavor of dried blueberries plays well with the tangy apricot.

That said, if you want to, you can use another dried fruit in place of the dried blueberries. Some suggestions for substitutions include:

I haven’t tested this recipe with fresh blueberries, but if you do try substituting in fresh blueberries for the dried blueberries, I would recommend increasing the cornstarch to 2 tablespoons to help absorb the liquid from the blueberries. If you try the recipe this way, please leave a note in the comments and I’ll add it to this section for other folks to see!

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Fresh apricots are very seasonal, and thus not always available. Feel free to swap out another chopped fresh stone fruit like pitted cherries, plums, peaches or nectarines for the fresh apricots.

You can also try swapping out dried apricots for the fresh apricots. Place the dried apricots and blueberries in a heatproof bowl and pour boiling over them until just barely covered. Let them sit for 10 to 15 minutes to plump up. Drain the liquid, reserving 2 tablespoons of it. Then chop the apricots into 1/2-inch chunks. Cool the liquid and add the 2 tablespoons into the filling mix, along with the remaining ingredients.

This recipe uses active dry yeast, but you can substitute rapid rise or instant yeast in it place. You can either use less rapid rise or instant yeast (1 3/4 teaspoons instead of the 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast) or use the same amount (2 1/4 teaspoons or 1 package) and expect the dough to rise and double in size faster.

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When using instant or rapid rise yeast, you can add the yeast directly in with the dry ingredients, with the flour. You don’t need to dissolve it first in the wet ingredients.

Yes! You can knead the dough by hand, but keep in mind your dough might end up a little more dry than if used a stand mixer.

Mix the dough ingredients together with a wooden spoon in a large bowl until a shaggy dough forms and most of the dry ingredients are incorporated. Dump the contents of the bowl onto a clean surface. Using the heel of your hands, fold and press down on the dough, repeating this movement, while rotating the dough 90° with every press. Continue to knead the dough, occasionally dipping your hands in flour, to keep the dough from sticking.

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The dough will initially seem sticky, so don’t add more flour to the dough itself, just dust your hands. The dough should firm up and smooth out as you knead. But if you do need to add more flour, do it 1 tablespoon at a time. The dough should be smooth and elastic by the time you’re done kneading, about 5 to 7 minutes.

Yes, you can freeze this bread! Slice the bread, and then store it in an airtight container or resealable Ziploc bag for up to 2 months. Defrost it on you countertop for an hour before serving, or warm it up directly from the freezer in your toaster oven or oven, for about 10 minutes at 350°F.

This yeasted bread is only very slightly sweet, with minimal sugar in the dough, a touch of honey in the filling and a dusting of sugar on top. The small amount of honey in the filling allows for the tangy apricot flavor to shine through. Serve slices of bread with afternoon teas or coffee or as a breakfast bread.This Apricot Cherry Breakfast Bread is a sweet, light, tender bread studded with dried apricots and tart cherries. Serve it for breakfast slathered with your favorite jam.

Homemade Apricot Bread Made With A Simple And Easy Yeast Dough Recipe

This is the first of eight recipes I’ll be creating forRed Star Yeastthis year using their terrific yeast. I’ll post a new recipeon the first Monday of the month for the next eight months. So if you’re a bread lover like me, I hope this is good news. I know my family and I are looking forward to eating lots more homemade breads, sweet treats, and more.

This bread is a challah bread with dried fruit added to the dough and then sprinkled with pearl sugar. I started with the Challah recipe on the Red Star Yeast website and adapted it to recreate the breakfast bread I had on the cruise.

I did a simple two strand braidfor this bread, but you could also do a three strand, or even a four strand braid. A few years ago I posted a Whole Wheat Challah bread recipe that gives directions for braidinga four strand braid.

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The breakfast bread on the ship didn’t have as much dried fruit, but I thought a little more would be nice. It also had dried cranberries instead of dried cherries, but when I noticedsome dried cherries in the pantry, Icouldn’t resist using them instead.

This bread is great without or without jam. I think it would also make a fabulous French toast too. I plan totry thatthis weekend.

My daughter was happy I was teaming up with Red Star Yeast again. She said my Red Star Yeast recipes are some of her favorites. I hope they are some of your favorites too.

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Disclosure: This post is sponsored byRed Star Yeast, but all opinions expressed are always my own.You can also find Red Star Yeast onFacebook, TwitterandPinterest.

As of June 2022 Melissa Griffiths now is the one adding recipes. So think of it as Barbara Bakes, and Melissa too! Melissa and Barbara have been blogging friends for over 10 years and when Barbara was ready to retire and spend more time with her family, Melissa took over the site.