I had 3 old apples hanging out on my kitchen counter for an embarrassingly long time. My husband told me to do something about them… so I turned them into apple butter, which naturally ended up in this apple butter sourdough milk bread 🤷🏻‍♀️

The soft interior of apple sourdough bread.

The result? Soft, fluffy bread with little specks of apple butter throughout. It’s slightly sweet with a hint of spice, making this a really good loaf to eat on its own or toasted with a little butter. I didn’t add any extra spices beyond what was already in the apple butter, so the flavor stays pretty mellow.

If you’re not into sourdough pumpkin milk bread, this might be more your kind of fall bread.

Key ingredients

Ingredients for apple butter sourdough milk bread.

🍎 I have to say homemade apple butter is an absolute key in this recipe. I’ve not been able to replicate this recipe with store bought apple butter (the only brand I can find easily was Musselman’s at Albertsons). So far, the only difference I can point to is the spices. My homemade apple pie spice does not contain cloves and the Musselman’s apple butter has cloves in it.

So if you’re using store bought apple pie spice to make the apple butter, just check to make sure it doesn’t include cloves, some brands do and some don’t. If yours has cloves, I recommend just using cinnamon instead.

Sample baking schedule

There are a couple things you still need to prepare the day before: your apple butter and your starter. The schedule below accounts for that. You can also make the apple butter well ahead of time and refrigerate for several weeks. Remember that the timeline is my best estimate based on my kitchen tests. Your exact timeline will vary depending on your kitchen environment.

Day 1
7:00 AM	Feed your regular sourdough starter
Anytime	Make apple butter (~8 hrs in the slow cooker)
7:00 PM	Make apple butter starter with active starter
Day 2
8:00 AM	Scald milk & prepare liquid
8:15 AM	Autolyse
8:35 AM	Knead the dough
9:00 AM	Continue bulk fermentation
9:45 AM	Stretch and fold #1
10:30 AM	Stretch and fold #2
11:15 AM	Stretch and fold #3 + continue bulk
2:00 PM	Finish bulk + divide dough (may be earlier if your dough rise faster)
2:15 PM	Shape into logs
2:30 PM	Proof
10:00 PM	Bake (may be earlier if your dough proof faster)

The schedule pushes the bake really late, if this doesn’t work for you, you can push it to Day 3. You can add a cold fermentation step after you finish bulk fermentation at 2pm or after you shape the dough at 2:15pm. I’ve done this both ways. Then you can take it out of the fridge right before bed, proof overnight, and bake in the morning. You’ll see this option in the time stamp in my recipe card.

The one disadvantage of proofing overnight is that you won’t be able to watch it and if your loaf ends up proofing much faster, you risk overproofing it. In this case you also have the option to leave it in the fridge overnight and proof in the morning of Day 3.

Let’s make apple butter sourdough milk bread!

Instructions for the apple butter are in my recipe card at the end of this post but I’m not going to walk through it here. If you want more details/process photos, you can check out my post on slow cooker apple butter on my other blog.

Mix apple butter with sourdough starter and flour; apple butter starter rising in a glass jar.

1. Make apple butter starter (night before)

If you’re cooking the apple butter the same day you’re making this starter, just make sure you’re not using piping hot apple butter straight from the slow cooker. Let it cool first. Otherwise, you can use room temp or even cold apple butter straight from the fridge.

NOTE: Make sure you have an active regular sourdough starter before making this apple butter starter.

Collage of 3 photos: milk and brown sugar in a saucepan; sliced butter is added; pouring the milk mixture into a mixing bowl with apple butter.

2. Prepare your liquid

It’s completely okay to use cold apple butter from the fridge in this step, it will cool your mixture down faster and you may be able to start the autolyse step right away.

Pouring flour into metal mixing bowl; mixing the dough mixture for autolyse.

3. “Autolyse”

This is not a true autolyse since we are adding a bunch of non-traditional ingredients to the mixture. However, I think this step still helps with dough strength and extensibility. And I have never done otherwise.

Adding sourdough starter to the mixing bowl; pulling bread dough out with the dough hook.

4. Knead the dough

Add all of the apple butter sourdough starter to the “autolysed” dough and knead with the dough hook for 20 minutes. The dough should pull away from the side of the bowl easily. You’ll want to shape it into a ball and place it back into the bowl to continue bulk fermentation.

Stretching and folding sourdough apple bread dough.

5. Stretches and folds

During bulk fermentation, you will perform 3 sets of stretch-and-fold to add strength to your dough at 45-minute intervals. Once you are finish with your last set, cover and let the dough finish bulk fermentation at room temp.

NOTE: You will notice the dough rising some during this step. That’s okay, don’t worry about deflating it. You will also notice it gets harder to pull and stretch during set 2 and 3. Don’t force it, you want to build strength but don’t want to break the gluten strands.

Apple milk bread dough at the start and end of bulk fermentation.

6. End bulk fermentation

You should visibly see how the dough changes during bulk fermentation. Here are photos of the start and end of bulk fermentation.

Divide apple milk bread dough into 3; roll into balls.

7. Divide the dough

Cut the dough into 3 equal portions. Roll them into smooth balls, cover and let rest for 10-15 minutes to allow the gluten to relax before shaping.

NOTE: The dough is not that sticky but I love using a silicone baking mat and vinyl gloves to keep everything clean and nonstick.

Rolling and shaping the dough into a log.

8. Shape into logs

Shape each ball into a log like so and place them into your loaf pan.

NOTE: You can also shape this into 1 big log if you don’t want to bother with dividing it into 3.

Apple butter sourdough milk bread before and after proofing.

9. Proof the dough

Proof the dough for 7 to 8 hours. The dough is ready when it is very puffy, has risen well above the rim of the loaf pan, and a gentle press leaves an indentation that slowly springs back (but not immediately).

NOTE: Proofing time is highly dependent on temperature so make sure to pay attention to visual cues but for me, this dough takes longer to proof than my other milk breads.

Brushing milk wash on top of the dough; baked apple butter sourdough milk bread.

10. Bake

Brush milk generously over the surface of your dough and bake at 400°F (205°C) for 7 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350°F (180°C) and bake for another 20 minutes. You want the internal temperature of your bread to reach 190 – 200°F. Let cool completely before cutting into it.

Did I say how good this apple butter sourdough bread is as toast? And that extra apple butter you’ve got, spread it on top! 👌