Brown Sugar & Peach Pull-Apart Bread

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I took people’s advice from my last post about my cooking dry spell and starting reading more cookbooks and browsing Pinterest. Pull-apart bread has been all over Pinterest for a while, but recently I started seeing it in a loaf form! I love the way the loaf looks- pieces of caramelly-sugar coated slices of bread drizzled with the perfect amount of icing- heavenly! I was enticed enough to try it out!

Almost every recipe I found used pre-made frozen biscuit dough, but I don’t think it would have given me the texture I was looking for. I wanted a pull apart bread they literally melted in your mouth where the bread was fluffy, light and delicious!

The only bread that came to my mind was Hokkaido milk bread, which I made a few months ago and it was by far the airiest and softest bread I had ever made! Hokkaido milk bread is made with tanzhong, which is a milk and flour roux. The warm tanzhong allows the flour particles to absorb more water, which makes more steam, which leads to extra fluffy bread!

I threw in extra ripe peaches and some lemon zest in between the layers for a summery touch. The butter and brown sugar melted into this delicious sticky caramel at the bottom of the pan. If you want to add a touch more sweetness, feel free to also top it with some vanilla icing, but I thought it was perfect without it.

Using the Hokkaido milk bread recipe as the base of this pull-apart bread made all the difference in the texture. Each piece of bread just melts in your mouth! Absolutely try this recipe. It seems a little daunting, but definitely worth it!

Brown Sugar & Peach Pull-Apart Bread

Total Time: 3 hours 40 minutes
Yield: 1 9x5 loaf of pull apart bread 1x

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Instructions

Tanzhong

Add bread flour and milk to a saucepan over medium-low heat. Whisk together until it starts to thicken.Once it thickens up enough so that your whisk leaves a trail when stirring, remove from heat and let cool.

Bread

Butter a 9×5 load pan and set aside.
Add warm whole milk, sugar and yeast to a large cup and stir. Let this sit for 10 minutes to activate the yeast.
Meanwhile, add bread flour, salt, egg, yeast mixture and tanzhong to a large mixing bowl. Use a large spatula to roughly mix the ingredients together. Using a dough hook on your stand mixer, mix on medium speed for 5 minutes. Use a spatula to scrape down the bowl and add the butter. Mix for another 5-7 minutes. The dough is ready when it spring back immediately when it’s poked. (Just wet your finger with a little water and poke the dough.)
Cover the dough with a tea towel and place in a warm place for 1- 1 1/2 hours to rise until it has doubled in size.
While the dough is rising, make the filling by adding brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, clove, lemon zest, and salt to a small bowl and mixing it well.
Once the dough is proofed, roll it out into a 20 x 12 inch rectangle onto a lightly floured surface. If the dough keeps springing back, let it rest for 10 minutes and try rolling it out again. Spread the softened butter over the dough. Cut the dough into 5 strips that are 4 x 12 inches long. Take one strip and sprinkle 1/5th of the filling over the dough. Then top with 1/5th of the diced peach. Next top with another strip of dough, top with more filling and peaches and continue stacking until you have used up all the strips of dough. Then using a sharp knife, cut the stack into 6 even pieces. Then take each mini stack and place them in the greased loaf pan cut side up. Continue placing each cut stack into the pan. Don’t be afraid to smush the last stack in if you have to! Top with any left over sugar filling you may have left.
Cover the dough with a tea towel and let it rise for 1 hour until doubled is size.
Pre-heat the oven to 350F. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the center of the bread registers at 190 F. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes. It’s best served warm!