Step 1

Into a bowl, add in the lukewarm water,sugar,salt,yeast and stir to dissolve the ingredients in water.Add in the melted butter.Add the flour into the liquid mix.

Step 2

Stir and combine.Make sure there are no dry patches left behind.If you happen to use volume measurements instead of weighing the ingredients, the consistency of dough may slightly differ.In that case just make sure there are no dry patches left behind and it form a coherent mass.We need to combine everything together to form a shaggy mass of dough.

Step 3

Wrap the bowl with a plastic film and let the dough stand rise in a warm environment for 1 hour or until it gets almost doubled in size.This proofing time may vary according to the ambient temperature.If the room temperature is cold, it may take around 1 and 1/2 hours.

Step 4

After One hour of rising, our dough has risen slightly.Now incorporate the dry fruit mix into the dough.I pulled the dough from sides of bowl and folded it into the center.Thus we can incorporate the fruits into the dough and simultaneously can deflate the dough.Take care not to over work the dough as this can create tension and elasticity to the dough.This may make it difficult for us to flatten the dough during the next step.After deflating the dough and mixing the dry fruits ,let’s simply press and shape it into a rectangle.The breadth of rectangle should match the length of our baking tray.Now roll the dough sheet like we roll a jelly roll and place it into the greased loaf pan.Now it’s ready for the next step.So cover it with a cling film and let it sit and rise in a warm environment.

Step 5

Let the dough sit and rise in warm environment for 90 minutes.As this fruit yeast bread contain lot of dry fruits, it take a little longer than regular breads to rise.So after 90 minutes, our dough has risen well.Give the fruity bread a good egg wash so that they will look golden brown with a shine on top after baking.We can prepare the egg wash by lightly beating an egg.

Step 6

Bake the Fruit bread at 350 F preheated oven for 34-35 minutes.Reduce the baking temperature to 325 F and bake for another 4-5 minutesThe top of the fruit bread or fruit loaf will start browning at around 25 minutes of baking.It doesn’t mean our dry fruit bread is done.At this point if we take it out, the center of the fruit yeast bread will have a doughy texture and it will smell very “yeasty”So wait for until the fruit bread is baked properly.If you find the top getting too dark, you can tent the top with an aluminum foil at around 25 minutes and then continue baking.When the fruit bread is done, take the tray out from the oven.Let the fruit loaf sit for 2-3 minutes in the baking tray itself.Then demould the fruit loaf so that the steam will not condense and it will not get soggy .If you want the crust to be more soft, smear the top with some butter while it is still warm.Wait for 2-3 hours for the bread to cool down completely.The steam which is entrapped within the bread will help to cook the inside of the bread completely during this cooling time.This is also called “Residual Baking”If we slice open the bread while it is cooling, we actually interrupt this residual baking.And may result in underbaked center portion in bread.When we slice open a partially baked bread, it will be crumbly in texture and smells “yeasty” in the middle.This is one of the Best Fruit Bread Recipes ,as the fruit bread has nice spice flavor and they are soft and is filled with lots of dry fruits.As a bonus it does not require kneading as well.The thick slices of this fruit bread makes wonderful French toast.EnjoY!