Cranberry Pecan Orange Loaf

There’s nothing like the smell of homemade bread coming from your oven as it’s baking. This holiday season, I’ve teamed up with The Bake Feed and Red Star Yeast to create a Cranberry Pecan Orange Loaf!

What is in the Cranberry Pecan Orange Loaf?

This festive no knead bread is filled with dried cranberries, toasted pecans, orange zest and spices. They’re gently folded into the dough, so everything is distributed throughout the bread. This way you’ll get some of these flavors in each bite.

Where did the Cranberry Pecan Orange Loaf recipe come from?

I used The Bake Feed’s Harvest Loaf recipe as the base to this Cranberry Pecan Orange Loaf.

The Harvest Loaf is a packed with whole grains, nuts and fruit. It has a crisp outer crust and a tender delicate inner crumb. So, adding my own twist just kept the same amazing taste and texture! To make the bread, the recipe starts with making a poolish.

What is Poolish?

Poolish is a leavening method used in baking. It’s a pre-ferment that gets added to dough and makes baked goods soft, fragrant and aromatic. A poolish is made of flour, water and a very tiny amount of yeast. It is then left to ferment for about 8-12 hours.

A poolish is similar to a sourdough starter but the difference is the source of the yeast. In a poolish the yeast is added to flour and water. In sourdough the yeast comes from natural yeasts.

Baking bread with a Poolish also requires less effort than baking bread with a levain as the levain has to be fed and discarded on a daily basis, where as the Poolish does not require any sort of daily maintenance.

Start the poolish the night before you make the bread by combining lukewarm water, a pinch of Red Star Active Dry Yeast, bread flour and whole wheat flour. Cover the bowl with a towel and let it rest on the counter.

How is the Cranberry Pecan Orange Loaf made?

The next day, add the poolish to a stand mixer along with water, the remaining yeast, flours, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and orange zest. Mix on a low speed for 4 minutes. Then, place in a separate bowl to rise for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes, start to do folds in the dough.

Why stretch and fold the dough?

Folding helps add strength to the dough. Stretch the dough out and over itself. This act of stretching and folding helps to develop the gluten in the dough. Each fold has a significant impact on dough strength.

Using wet hands, fold dough in bowl by grabbing underside of dough, stretch it up, and fold it to center of dough. Do this 4 times around bowl until the entire dough is folded into a ball.

Now, add the pecans and dried cranberries to dough. Using wet hands, squeeze nuts and fruit into dough until evenly distributed. This can take a few minutes to thoroughly get them mixed it.

Cover the bowl and let rise in a warm, draft-free place (75°F/24°C) for 30 minutes, repeating folding dough in bowl. Cover and let it rise again until the dough is doubled in size, about 30 minutes more.

For the last rise, Line a proofing basket or a medium bowl with a linen dusted with flour. You can get a proofing basket at many places like Amazon. They are have whole kits that include the basket, Linen Liner, Metal Dough Scraper, scoring lame, and the blades for the scorer. Set aside.

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface. Using your fingertips, gently press dough into a disk (about 1 inch thick). Grab bottom edge, and gently stretch and fold bottom third over center third. Stretch right side out, and fold right third over center; repeat with left side. Finish by folding top third over previous folds. Roll loaf away from you to seam side down, and using both hands, cup dough, and pull it toward you to seal. Rotate dough 90 degrees, and pull until a tight smooth boule forms.

Place the dough in the prepared basket or bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm, draft-free place (75°F/24°C) until dough is puffed and jiggles when basket or bowl is gently shaken, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

When dough has about 20 minutes left to rise, preheat oven to 500°F (260°C). Place a Dutch oven in oven to preheat. This is what you will use to bake the dough in.

Why bake the bread in a Dutch oven?

It’s very important to have steam during the beginning of baking a loaf of bread. By using a covered Dutch oven with this wet dough, the steam is trapped inside, surrounding the loaf. This keeps the crust soft and cool longer, allowing the yeast to go to work and the loaf to grow.

Turn out boule onto a piece of parchment paper lightly dusted with flour. At this point, you can either just bake the dough the way it is, or

using a lame or razor blade, score top of loaf. You can make any pattern you want to. I tried a Christmas tree pattern. You can just score a line from the top to the bottom or score something more elaborate.

Carefully remove Dutch oven, and using parchment to help, place boule with parchment into hot Dutch oven. Cover the Dutch oven with the lid, and place it in oven.

Immediately reduce oven temperature to 425°F (220°C). Bake for 25 minutes. Remove lid, and bake until bread is deep golden brown and an instant-read thermometer inserted in center registers 205°F (96°C) to 210°F (99°C), 10 to 15 minutes more. Immediately remove from Dutch oven, and let cool completely on a wire rack.

This Cranberry Pecan Orange Bread is the one loaf that you want to bake this season, especially using Red Star Active Dry Yeast!