As you may know or guess, I’m a big fan of bread, real bread, the simple ingredients  of Flour, Water, Salt and Yeast, yet I also love a sweet dough bread, whether that is a brioche bun for our burgers, or in this instance a yummy fruit loaf.

The fruit loaf, goes by many regional names, and this recipe my mum used to call a plum bread. It is basically a sweet dough, with sultanas, so in reality it is a grape bread, maybe?

There are a few more ingredients in the Fruit Loaf, which means Regan has more weighing and measuring to do…

Ingredients: 500g Flour; 10g of salt; 40g of Caster Sugar; 60g of Unsalted Butter; 250ml of lukewarm milk; 200g of Sultanas; 15g of Yeast; 3 Medium Eggs or 2 Large Eggs, plus 1 egg for the egg wash.

Method: We weigh the flour, the salt, the sugar and put it in the bowl for the KitchenAid dough mixer and switch on to a low setting.

We warm the milk in the microwave on full power for 1 minute, you want it warm, but not too hot that you can’t put your finger in it. We then add the yeast and the sultanas to the milk and leave for 5-10mins, for the fruit to plump up and the yeast to bubble.

Whilst we are waiting for the yeast and sultanas, we add the unsalted butter to the flour, salt and sugar in small pieces, so we finish with a crumb type texture. We then add the milk, yeast, sultanas in to the dough bowl keeping the dough mixer on a slow speed, finally add the eggs, to the mix and let the dough knead for 10 minutes on a slow speed.

The dough is wetter than a normal bread dough, but you want to be able to handle it, so carefully add a little more flour if the mix is too wet. As you will know from our other bread recipes, Regan likes to hand knead the dough, so we empty the dough on to a clean work surface and she folds, stretches and presses the dough for another 5 minutes. The keen eyed will notice that ‘Elsa’ from frozen was my assistant yesterday!

We then put the dough in a lightly greased bowl, we use a teaspoon of rapeseed oil to grease the bowl, and leave to proof for one hour, covered with a tea towel, or as we use a clear disposable shower cap.

After one hour, return to the work surface and gently knock back the dough and shape it. This time we put it in a loaf tin, but you can experiment with a different shaped loaf, maybe plaiting it?

Second proof for another 45-60 minutes whilst the oven is getting to temperature (set the oven to 220C). Whilst waiting, mix one egg with a pinch of salt and mix ready for the glaze.

Glaze with the egg wash just before putting in the oven. Turn the oven down to 170C/180C (depending on your oven) just before you put the bread in and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack and serve with butter, or maybe butter and cheese. It is also, very tasty toasted and whilst we don’t often, or should I say never have left overs, it would work well in a bread and butter pudding.

Enjoy x