This Apple Bread Recipe is filled with all the cozy Autumn flavors. The soft pull-apart bread has a butter spread, apples, cinnamon, and an amazing glaze. If you love the warm rich taste of Baked Apples, this apple bread is sure to become a new favorite.
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Apple Bread Recipe
Pull-apart apple bread is everything you can ask for in a sweet bread recipe. A soft and fluffy bread loaf that’s rolled out like cinnamon buns and topped with a generous portion of a vanilla butter spread, chunks or grated fresh apple and finished off with cinnamon sugar. The dough is cut and stacked like a pull-apart bread and topped with the best glaze.
Your house is going to smell wonderful as the aromas of the apple bread fill the home. This smells just like Homemade Apple Pie!
The Best Apples for Apple Bread?
Most crisp-tart apples will work in this recipe. Granny Smith apples are our favorite for baking. Gala and Golden Delicious are also great choices. Avoid apples that soften easily, like McIntosh apples or Red Delicious.
Tips for How to Make Apple Bread:
- Be sure the flour is measured out correctly.
- The milk should be warm for the yeast to activate and become foamy. Milk should be just warm to the touch.
- The dough should feel soft and not stick to your hands or mixing bowl. If your dough sticks to the bowl, add a few more tablespoons of flour, mixing well after the added flour.
- Mix the dough using a Kitchen Aid mixer with a dough hook or by hand.
- Butter MUST be room temp for easy spreading.
- When stacking the bread, stack loosely (it doesn’t have to look pretty)! The dough will rise again and fill in the extra space.
- Glaze Tip: For a glaze that penetrates into the bread, add glaze while the loaf is still warm. For a thicker glaze that will spread, add glaze once the loaf is completely cool.
How to Form Pull-Apart Bread:
Once the dough is made, forming the apple bread is as simple as making Cinnamon Rolls.
- Roll out dough into a rectangle
- Generously spread the vanilla butter over the dough
- Add the apples (cubed or grated) over the butter and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar
- Cut dough into 5 long uniform strips
- Cut the strips into equal squares for easy stacking
- Stack dough and transfer to pan and bake bread
2 Ways to Layer Pull-Apart Bread:
- When adding the stacked dough to the pan, for a pull-apart bread loaf, stack the bread loosely in a single layer.
- For a bread loaf that you will cut into slices, stack the pieces unevenly and intertwined so you can cut the bread with a knife and it won’t fall apart.
The Best Pan for Apple Bread:
Your bread pans should be at least a 1 lb pan with dimensions of 9″x5″ and deep so the dough doesn’t overflow.
More Sweet Bread Recipes:
There’s nothing like pulling a warm sweet bread from the oven on a cool morning. The aroma of sweet bread recipes will fill your kitchen better than any scented candle.
- Classic Pumpkin Bread – A favorite during the fall season
- Chocolate Chip Banana Bread – with melty morsels of chocolate
- Twisted Sweet Bread – with raspberry jam cream cheese filling
- Banana Bread – A classic that is moist and loaded
- Lemon Blueberry Loaf– So much flavor
What is your favorite way to enjoy apples? Let me know in a comment below! We are always looking for new ways to incorporate apples into recipes. 🙂
Pull-Apart Apple Bread Recipe
Ingredients
Bread Dough Ingredients:
- 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
- 3/4 cup whole milk
- 1/4 cup water
- 5 Tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 Tbsp active dry yeast
Apple Filling Ingredients:
- 8 Tbsp unsalted butter, 1/2 cup
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 4 cups apples, peeled and grated
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
Glaze Ingredients:
- 3 Tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
- 1/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
- ¼ tsp vanilla extract
- 2 Tbsp heavy whipping cream
- 1/3 cup powdered sugar
Instructions
To Make the Apple Bread:
- Cover two bread pans with parchment paper, butter sides or spray with baking spray. Preheat oven to 350°F at step 6. In a small saucepan, add butter, milk, water and sugar. Stirring frequently, cook until milk becomes warm and butter melts. (If milk gets too hot, let it cool until just warm to the touch.)
- Sprinkle yeast over the warm milk and stir. Cover the bowl and allow yeast to activate and become foamy, about 5 minutes. Stir in 2 beaten eggs.
- Add flour to a large mixing bowl, form a well in the center, and add the warm milk mixture. Fold until the flour until the dough is soft, pliable and no longer sticks to your hands or the bowl. (Tip: Add additional flour 1 Tbsp at a time as needed until dough no longer sticks to the bowl.) Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let rise 1 hour at room temperature.
- Transfer dough to a generously floured work surface. Lightly sprinkle top with flour and use a rolling pin to roll it into an 18”x20” rectangle.
- In a small bowl, use a fork to combine butter and vanilla. Spread the butter evenly over the rolled dough. Spread grated or diced apples evenly over the top. Combine the cinnamon and sugar, sprinkle evenly over the dough.
- Cut the dough into 5 long uniform strips. Cut the strips into squares. Stack dough and transfer to bread pans dividing dough between the two pans, loosely stacking the squares on their sides. Cover pans with a towel or plastic wrap, rise 30 minutes. Bake uncovered at 350˚F for 25-30 minutes until bread is golden in color. Allow bread to cool completely before applying glaze.
How to Make the Sweet Bread Glaze:
- In a saucepan, on med/high heat, combine butter, sugar and vanilla. Bring to a light boil. Add heavy whipping cream, stir to combine and remove from heat. Set aside to cool.
- Once the glaze is cooled, add the powdered sugar. Set glaze aside to thicken then drizzle or spread over the cooled apple bread.
Notes
Nutrition Per Serving
Filed Under
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Hi! I'm Natasha Kravchuk. Here you'll find delicious, trusted recipes with easy step-by-step photos and videos. 
Terrible recipe, as written; guaranteed to fail without tweaks on your part. Here’s why. Right off the bat, the flour amount is wrong. I had to add another cup of flour to get a workable dough. It looks like batter with the amount of flour called for. Second, the dough as written is bland and tasteless, like white Wonder bread. Add at least one teaspoon of vanilla and half teaspoon of at to get some flavor. Third, and it sounds bad to butter snobs, but substitute an equal amount of margarine for the butter in the filling. Why? The butter melts into the dough whereas the margarine does not. It blends with the cinnamon and sugar to create a gooey filling, like a Cinnabon. It gives the grated apple something to hold on to so it doesn’t fall off the bread. Double the cinnamon and sugar and add some ground cloves and nutmeg to add some depth to the flavor. Lastly, like someone else mentioned, squeeze the grated apple to get the juice out. Otherwise, like an apple pie, you’ll end up with a lot of juice in the bottom of the pan and in the dough.
Super involved recipe this very disappointed when after 3 minutes of baking mine must not have been fine in the middle (difficult to tell due to texture) and it fell while cooling.
Saved the outside and frosting was fabulous…but bread not as good tasting the next day. Needs to be eaten warm.
Hi Natasha, can I use wheat flour to make this instead of all purpose flour? Thanks!
Hi, I haven’t tested this with wheat flour to advise.
Isn’t all-purpose flour wheat flour?
It’s not the same but in most cases, you may substitute whole wheat for all-purpose flour without issue.
I struggled with this bread, the dough was incredibly sticky! no matter how much flour I added, after a short while it was sticking to the counter again. I ended up rolling the stripes instead of cutting them into squares and the bread ended up looking really nice too this way.
I added twice as much cinnamon and next time will add twice as much sugar – since the bread was a bit tasteless. Just like others I had to bake it for longer than the recommended 25-30; it was 40 in my oven (but I have a fan one so lowered temp to 160 C). Also – how do you incorporate butter with vanilla extract? it didn’t want to mix together.
Overall a nice bread, I will definitely make it again, just will try to get a bit more flavour out of it.
I’m so sorry you were having so much trouble, Shcola.
I’d love to troubleshoot. What kind of flour did you use?
If your butter was room temp, the vanilla will just incorporate if you mix it with a fork.
You are more than welcome to add more sugar if you like your bread really sweet.
(I loved your idea of rolling the bread instead of stacking it.)
This bread came out amazing! I will definitely be baking it on a regular basis. Your raspberry cream cheese sweet bread recipe was great too. Thank you, Valentina!
I forgot to mention that I did add a teensy less than 1/2 tsp of salt and it came out perfect.
That’s just awesome! Thank you for sharing your wonderful review!
I just made for the second time your Pull apart Apple bread posted by Natasha’s kitchen. It’s a great recipe, however it’s a bit bland. Shouldn’t salt be added?
I added 1/2 tsp of salt and it was perfect.
I must say, this bread is pretty delicious!! I tweaked it a bit: doubled on cinnamon and vanilla, added salt, and baked it for about 50 minutes like some of the comments said. It came out really good! My family loved it. I would prefer to have a video tutorial on how to layer it in the pan, it took me a bit of time to figure out. But I felt like either way you put in the pan, it will still come out smelling delicious and taste wonderful on a chilly day. I’ll be making this bread again!
Hi Evelyn! I’m glad you enjoyed that! Thank you for the video tutorial suggestion.
The dough recipe is amazing, BUT I found directions for filling and icing very fussy. Also, I’m trying to figure out why is there whole milk AND water in dough ingredients, when using 2% milk instead would do as well (worked just fine for me.)
Adding vanilla extract to soft butter for filling was tricky, and vanilla sugar would be easier to use instead. To simply, I melted filling butter and mixed it with cinnamon sugar and vanilla, then applied it on dough. I also used a simple icing made of icing sugar, vanilla and milk.
The dough is a keeper and I’ll be using it in my monkey bread, but I won’t be making this recipe as is again.
I was wondering what step 15 meant when it said to preheat the oven to ____ at step 15… what did you mean by that?
Hi Mikmian, I apologize that should say in step 6. I fixed that and thank you for asking.
I’m not sure what I did wrong. I followed the recipe to the “T.” The bread did not come out like bread at all. It came out like uncooked dough you’d find in the freezer at the store. I had to bake it 1 hour for it not to be gooey on the inside. The taste is delicious, just wish it came out correctly.
I’m sorry to hear that. I am always happy to troubleshoot. Did your dough rise adequately before baking? If not, you might check that your yeast is still active. Also, if the dough gets too warm in the proofing stage, you can deactivate the yeast which can cause the dough not to rise and bake up properly. I hope that helps!
Same, Im currently baking it and its been over 30 min am has not finished baking, looks uncooked. :/
Let me know how it finishes, if you feel like it needs a bit more time, go with your gut and maybe give it 5-10 extra min.
I have been looking at this recipe for a while now, but was hesitant to try it due to the wide range of mixed reviews… but I will honestly say, I 100% loved this recipe exactly as is! I didn’t have any issues with over-flowing from pan, or under baked in the time specified, etc.
Just a few pointers of what I think may have gone wrong for some people. There’s a chance that some people may have over crowded their pans. I ended up using one 9×5 loaf pan, and one 9inch round pan (since I don’t own 2 loaf pans). The squares of dough were loosely placed, and I allowed the dough to rise again before placing the pans in the oven. I also squeezed out some (maybe 1/2) of the juice from the apples after grating them before spreading over the dough. I think this could possibly be why some peoples breads seemed to be raw inside. The other point often discussed was salt content in the dough… I didn’t feel it needed it. The dough very much reminded me of my moms recipe for pierogi, and I thought it was delicious!
I’m so glad I tried this recipe! My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed the apple bread! Thanks Natasha for another great one!! This one is going into our book as one of our favorites!
Hi Maria, I’m so glad you enjoyed this recipe! Thank you so much for your tips and suggestions, this is so helpful for everyone. We appreciate it!
Also any suggestions on where I went wrong. Mine came out doughy and not bread like at all
Perhaps you removed the bread too early?
A few suggestions cause this recipe isn’t quite right.
1. I used 4 to 4 ¼c of flour. It took a lot to get it where it wasn’t sticky.
2. I used twice as much vanilla extract everytime it was called for.
3. I used twice as much cinnamon.
4. I cubed my apples very small. There is no way you can stack and lay these as shown if you cube. But it still is tasty.
5. When I proofed my dough, I first microwaved a cup of water for 2 minutes to get the microwave warm and steamy. Then I covered my dough and let if proof in the microwave.
6. Make sure you roll it out enough. It makes a large square, bigger than you think.
7. You may be better off just making cinnamon rolls. The loaf won’t come out as pictured.
8. You’re going to make a gigantic mess. Try cutting the squares with a pizza cutter and use the edge to lift them off the counter. They will stick with all the butter you put on.
9. That pan isn’t big enough. Just use a casserole dish and line it with foil to make it smaller.
10. It makes too much for a small family, I’ll half it next time.
11. I used all the icing on one loaf. Suggest doubling.
This recipe was delicious! Thank you!
I’m so glad you enjoyed this recipe, Anna!
This bread was so much fun to make and ended up looking so beautiful and intricate, but in the end I wasn’t much of a fan. I think this has been mentioned in other reviews, but the bread part itself did not have the best flavor. I expected the bread would be sweet and flavorful throughout. But really, the fillings and topping were the only flavorful part–the actual bread tasted exactly like plain white bread to me, which was not what I was anticipating. I also had problems with the dough overflowing, same as other reviewers. Overall I’m glad I tried it, because it looked so fun and intriguing, but don’t think I’ll be coming back to it in the future.
Hi, I have a question, Tha apple bread recipe, it calls for whole milk, can I use 2 percent? I have just made your apple pie with filling, it’s in the oven. Looking forward to trying it. Thanks for any help you can give me.
Laurie
Hi Laurie, 2% may work although I haven’t tested that to advise.
I loved this recipe! I added some salt to the filling. As well I macerated the apples and used the juice in the glaze along with a hit of meyer lemon zest that I had on hand, and a little salt. the glaze was excellent!!
Hi Jenn! I’m so glad to hear that you loved the recipe. Thank you for the feedback.
Similar to what Alison said, this recipe needs a lot more flour. I added half a cup but probably needed a full cup of extra flour. Wouldn’t recommend this recipe unfortunately
You’re the best I LOVE ALL your recipe they are LIKE TONY TIGER would say GREAT!,!,
You’re so nice! Thank you for that wonderful compliment!
Hi Natasha, I have guests coming over for dessert tomorrow. But they don’t eat dairy, so I need a couple of dairy free desserts for them. Please please let me know with any suggestions.
Thanks!
Hi Lilly, we haven’t labeled any dairy-free specifically but many of our recipes can be substituted with dairy-free options. I recommend reading through the comments of recipes you like
Can this be made in a regular loaf instead of pull apart.
Hi Sharon, I will have to post a classic apple bread recipe. I will put it on my list.
Just tried this recipe. Still too hot to eat, but it smells delicious!!
I’m sure it is so delicious! Enjoy and I hope you love it.