Worth Puckering Up For: Simply Delicious Cranberry Muffins & Holiday Bread

Cranberries add a sweet, tart tang to treats. Feature them as the main ingredient or a happy sidekick in these cranberry bread recipes. Perfect for breakfast, brunch, lunch or snack time!

The following is an excerpt from The Hungry Ghost Bread Book by Jonathan Stevens. It has been adapted for the web.

Lemon-Cranberry Bran Muffins

Makes 6 muffins

Ingredients

• Wheat bran 90 g
• Yogurt 1 cup (227 g)
• Sunflower oil 1/2 cup (114 g)
• Large eggs 2
• Barley malt 1/2 cup (186 g)
• Baking soda 1 teaspoon (6 g)
• Baking powder 1 teaspoon (4 g)
• Salt 1/2 teaspoon (3 g)
• Dried cranberries (unsweetened!) 1 cup (121 g)
• Grated lemon zest 2 teaspoons (4 g)

Muffins are not meant to be pseudo-cupcakes. Icing, as far as I’m concerned, is a penalty in both hockey and baking. The first outstanding bran muffin I recall eating was at Trident Booksellers & Cafe in Boulder, Colorado, in 1985. It was that good. It was also the first time I saw coffee afficionados line up for a barista, but then everyone in Boulder seemed to have time to hang around back then.

Hanging around was not quite was I was doing when I set out to create my own version of these muffins, eleven years later. Up at the crack of dawn with a baby in a sling, making breakfast before the four-year-old woke up too. Determined to deny my kids refined sugar (and television!) for as long as possible, barley malt became my favorite substitute. We all eventually recovered from my strict principles.

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190.5°C). Oil 6 cups of a standard muffin tin.

Mix the bran and yogurt together in a large bowl, and let that sit for 10 minutes. In a separate bowl, beat the oil, eggs, and barley malt together, then stir that into the bran-yogurt mixture. Sift the baking soda, baking powder, and salt together thoroughly, then gently add that to the mixture, along with the dried cranberries and lemon zest.

Do not overmix.

Spoon the batter into the oiled muffin cups, distributing the batter evenly. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the thinnest edges look crispy and enticing. Share with the nearest toddler.

Cranberry Holiday Bread

Makes 2 (1 1/2-pound) loaves

Formula

• Egg 1 large egg (1 egg per kilo of flour)
• Honey 4.5% 38 g
• Olive oil 3% 25 g
• Water 64% 538 g
• Sourdough starter 12% 100 g
• Strong white bread flour (14% protein) 80% 672 g
• Semolina flour 20% 168 g
• Salt 3% 25 g
• Fresh or thawed frozen whole cranberries 18% 151 g
• Poppy seeds, for coating

This loaf has seen some different iterations, not a few of which had wild rice in them, but that often made the crumb sticky and starchy. We make it only for Thanksgiving and Christmas, two of our busiest times. We are honored to be part of so many family feasts, though I have to say that we’re pretty exhausted by the time our own holiday meal finally comes around!

We’re getting a little long in the tooth for these all-nighters, blasting out The Last Waltz and every Arlo Guthrie album ever made in order to keep up the momentum. One strategic adaption was to make this an enriched dough that allows it to be easily shaped and proofed on the Big Day (after an overnight bulk ferment), then baked on a lower-temperature tandem bake (skip that last fire, go home early!). It also gives it a longer shelf life.

Imagine, then, a fusion of Narragansett and Italian ingredients, a New World panettone with cranberries and semolina flour. Italian not for Columbus, so much, as perhaps Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), who really did make it to Massachusetts, as far as we can tell, back at the end of the fifteenth century. I’d like to think they all would have given thanks for a bread like this.

This is a golden challah dough with big chunks of fruit jammed in there and celebratory poppy seeds coating the whole crust. It’s perfect for cold turkey sandwiches many days later.

Photo credit: Mahesh Ramachandran

Instructions

Beat the egg, then whisk in the honey and olive oil. Combine the water, starter, and flours in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, then add the egg mixture. Mix on low speed for 4 minutes, enough to incorporate well. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes. Replace the paddle attachment with the dough hook; oil the hook if necessary.

Uncover the dough and add the salt and a little water right away on first speed, then gear up to second speed for 4 minutes. Pour in the cranberries halfway through. Yes, it will seem like a lot of fruit, and some of those little guys will escape and roll away later, when you are shaping the dough, but remember that if you are not overstuffing it, you will be underwhelmed. As an infamous celebrity once asked me on the phone, “Where did all the olives go?” (And I replied that they were like wealth, not evenly distributed throughout the population.)

Transfer the dough to an oiled bin, cover, and bulk proof overnight in the fridge—or outside, if it’s between 32 and 42°F (0–5.5°C). Divide the dough in half and shape into rounds, dusting with poppy seeds to coat them and give them even more panache. Put them in baskets, covered, for 4 to 5 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190.5°C), with your steam setup and a baking stone, parchment-lined baking sheet, or Dutch oven inside. When the loaves have filled out their baskets, maneuver them gently onto your baking surface. Score the dough with the innards of a peace sign (the loaf itself is the outer circle); we all could use some more peace, around the table and around this weary world. I’ll give aspirational thanks for that. Bake for 20 minutes, uncover the Dutch oven (if using), and continue baking for an additional 20 minutes, until hollow-sounding when tapped.

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