Spiced Fruit and Nut Sourdough Bread (Fruit Cake Style)

The ultimate spiced fruit and nut sourdough bread! This sourdough is loaded with fruit and nut, making it closer to a fruit cake than a loaf of bread. Gently spiced with cinnamon, and dotted with crunchy nuts, and soft, chewy fruit, this sourdough bread is perfect for Christmas, Easter, or any holiday!

Of all the kinds of sourdough I make, whether that’s a standard sourdough bread, or pumpkin sourdough bread, this spiced fruit and nut sourdough bread is probably my absolute favourite!

So often with fruit and nut sourdough, there’s just not enough fruit or nut in there! This recipe solves that problem by adding a lot of dried fruit and chopped nuts. The sourdough will be more dense than a standard loaf because of this. But, you end up with the most delicious, sticky, chewy, crunchy sourdough slice ever!

Ingredients in this Fruit Cake Style Sourdough Bread

The ingredients for this spiced fruit and nut sourdough are the same as a standard sourdough bread recipe. The only additions are spices, dried fruit, and nuts! So, you will need flour, water, salt, and active starter. You’ll also need any dried fruits and nuts of your choosing. I love dried figs, apricots, and cranberries for that festive flavour!

If you’re in Australia, I highly recommend heading to Coles and getting their ‘soft and juicy’ range of dried figs and dried apricots. They’re incredibly plump and juicy! And once baked in this sourdough fruit cake bread, they’re jammy and gorgeous with the perfect texture!

Plus, because they still have some water content, there’s no need to soak them for this sourdough bread! Often when adding dried fruit to bread, you’ll see people soaking their fruit. This is because the dried fruit sucks up the moisture out of the bread, leading to a dry loaf. But for this spiced fruit and nut sourdough, you can throw those dried fruits right in!

And if you don’t use the exact ones I recommend here, do not worry! I have made this recipe plenty of times with regular dried fruit. It still turns out utterly delicious! Because the water content is already quite high for the sourdough loaf, we have some leeway with the moisture. For those of you who are keen sourdough enthusiasts, this a high hydration loaf, sitting at 80%.

In any case, you can use any dried fruit you like! Dates would be a lovely addition.

For the nuts, you can use any you like as well. I use walnuts and pecans in this recipe!

And for the spices, you will need cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and cardamom. These all give that lovely, Christmas-like cosy flavour in this sourdough bread.

How to Make Spiced Fruit and Nut Sourdough Bread

The process is much like standard sourdough bread! The only difference is that I add the spices in with the water, flour, active starter and salt.

So first, mix everything together, and let it sit for around 30 minutes to let the flour hydrate. This is called letting the dough ‘fermentolyse’. It gives the dough a head start on the fermentation process!

Then perform some rounds of stretch and folds as per normal, spaced roughly 20-40 minutes apart. I like to do 3-6 rounds of stretch and folds.

This is done by grabbing one ‘corner’ of the dough, stretching it up toward you, then folding it over the rest of the dough. Do this for each of the four ‘corners’ of the dough until you’ve done one revolution of the bowl. This is considered one round of stretch and folds!

After your last round of stretch and folds, lay the dough onto a floured surface and pull it into a large rectangular shape. This is the ‘lamination’ step where we add the fruits and nuts! Scatter on your dried, chopped fruit and nuts, and roll the sourdough into a log. It will seem difficult to do this because of the sheer amount of fruits and nuts. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be a perfectly shaped log for this sourdough loaf!

Place the dough in a bowl, and do a few coil folds to gently incorporate the fruits and nuts. This also helps with gluten development! Just grab the bottom of the dough by the middle, gently stretch it up, and let it fold over itself. Repeat a few times until the fruits and nuts are distributed somewhat evenly.

Then cover, and leave the dough to double in size. But be prepared for this step to take much longer than usual! Cinnamon and clove inhibit fermentation, so it may take longer than the usual 8-12 hours. And of course, the weight of the fruit and nut will also slow this down. Moral of the story: look at the dough, not the clock!

Once the dough has doubled in size, lay it out on a floured surface.

Gently stretch it into a rectangular shape and roll it up on itself. Don’t expect much shaping to happen here – the fruits and nuts make it difficult to create surface tension. But it won’t matter, just do your best! I did say this would be a dense fruit cake style sourdough!

Then just pop the dough into a banneton or floured tea towel in a bowl. Let it slowly ferment in the fridge for 12-24 hours (or longer, depending on how tangy you like your sourdough).

When ready to bake, preheat a cast iron Dutch oven. Meanwhile, lay the dough on a lightly floured piece of baking paper. Scatter some flour on the surface of the dough. Then do one deep score with a bread lame or sharp knife (this is the expansion score). You can make a beautiful scoring pattern if you like. But I find it doesn’t really stand out much in this loaf, because of all that delicious fruit and nut!

Then just bake at a very high heat covered, then lower the temperature and bake uncovered, and enjoy! This is not typical for sourdough, but lowering the temperature for the uncovered bake ensures the fruit doesn’t burn.

The house will smell incredible once it’s in the oven. Better than any holiday candle in my opinion!

And although technically you should wait for the sourdough to cool down, I know you’ll slice right into it and enjoy with some butter. Just like I did 🙂

I truly hope you love this recipe! If you tried it and loved it, I would be so grateful if you left a 5-star review and a comment to let me know how it went! xxx