Easy Cranberry Bread Recipe (100% Whole Wheat)

A favorite tried-and-true cranberry bread recipe made healthier with whole wheat flour and lower sugar – and no one can tell the difference! Flavored with orange juice and using either fresh or dried cranberries, it can also easily be made dairy free. A slice of this delicious bread along with a warm cup of tea makes a wonderful fall snack that thankfully is just as good any time of the year.

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In college I lived with a family where I learned how to make some wonderful recipes that I still make today like French beef stew (I think it’s the best stew out there!), Tex-Mex salad with ranch style beans, American-style French salad dressing, and this cranberry bread recipe.

What I learned as a 21-year old watching that mom feed her young family and four college students on a budget is that real food doesn’t have to be fancy or hard to be filling and good. She wasn’t gourmet and she didn’t go in for much in the way of processed foods or convenience (except for her “special” cans of ranch-style beans!).

Maybe this was the beginning for me of realizing simple, real food is the best?

And this cranberry bread is a case in point: oh, the days we’d come home to the smell of this freshly baked bread from the oven! And while it smells heavenly, the taste is out-of-this-world, too. The bright citrus flavors combine SO well with the nuts and cranberry (which is why I add orange to my naturally sweetened cranberry sauce, too).

Over the years I have adapted the original recipe I copied down to use less sugar and 100% whole wheat pastry. I’ve found that you can easily use whole wheat pastry flour in place of all purpose flour in most recipes like quick breads, cookies, and muffins.

This really is one of my favorite bread recipes, though I usually only make it in the fall. And then after a year of not having it, I’m surprised all over again with how yummy it is! This is definitely a recipe you can feel great about gifting to friends and family – everyone loves it.

Ingredient Notes & Substitutions

• Flour: The recipe calls for whole wheat pastry flour, which is a soft red wheat. If you need to substitute, use all purpose flour (like the original recipe), and NOT regular wheat flour (a hard red wheat). Your bread will be dense and drier if you use regular wheat flour.
• Sugar: The original recipe used a whole cup of white sugar, which I’ve reduced. I haven’t tried this with honey, maple syrup, or brown sugar.
• Butter: This recipe uses softened butter that is cut into the dry ingredients, like a pastry. It creates little pockets of air which I think creates a nicer texture than melted butter or oil. *I’ve gotten some comments wondering about this but this is a vintage recipe and this typically pastry technique is what it called for. So I tested the recipe with oil – which you definitely can use to be dairy free – and I share the differences in texture and appearance below (and provide the options in the recipe card).
• Orange juice: Cranberries and orange is a classic combination, but if you don’t have juice you can substitute milk or water.
• Orange zest: This is optional and if I don’t have any oranges, I don’t use it. But it does add more of that great orange flavor.
• Cranberries: You can use either fresh or dried cranberries for this recipe, which is a nice option for the times of year that cranberries aren’t available. *I’ve gotten comments about the instructions to chop the berries. No, you don’t HAVE to, but I think chopping them (either the fresh or dried if they are whole) results in a much nicer loaf with more evenly spaced berries that also slices better (see below where I show the difference).

Tools & Supplies

• Kitchenaid Mixer (You can also mix this by hand using a pastry cutter to cut in the butter.)
• Small glass measure
• 9×5-inch loaf pan (I love USA pans)
• Metal cooling rack
• Whole wheat pastry flour
• Unsweetened dried cranberries (my preference, but sweetened dried cranberries are good, too)

Let’s Make This Cranberry Bread Recipe

Step 1: Mix together the dry ingredients and then cut in the butter until the mixture looks like cornmeal, pictured above. Alternately, melt the butter or use oil and mix with the wet ingredients before adding to the dry mixture.

Cut-in Butter vs. Oil: In the photos above you can see the difference between cutting in the butter (on the left) and using oil (right). There is a difference in color – even though the lighting in the photos is different, you can see the loaf with the oil is lighter in color. Also the oil loaf on the right had a looser texture that made it crumble more when cutting.

Chopped Cranberries vs. Whole: The chopped cranberries (left) are more evenly distributed than the ones left whole on the right. The whole cranberries also made cutting harder and you can see where whole berries popped out when cutting in the photo on the right.

Which to do? Either of these methods taste WONDERFUL. Do what you want, but I did want to illustrate the WHY of both the butter and the chopped berries, since both have been asked in the comments. The butter and chopping the cranberries remains the classic way to make this and how I’ll continue since we can have dairy, but it’s nice to have a non-dairy option if needed!

Looking at these slices, you can probably see why I always start thinking about this bread in the fall and winter – can you just imagine a slice with a cup of tea or coffee on a gray, cold day?

Hearty, filling, and full of flavor, this bread will make any day seem brighter.

I hope you like this cranberry bread recipe as much as I do – be sure to leave a rating and review so I can know how you like it!

Other Quick Breads You May Like:

• Healthy, Whole Wheat No Fail Zucchini Bread
• Garlic-Cheese Zucchini Bread
• Maple Sweetened Coconut Bread
• Cranberry Crumb Loaves or Muffins (uses leftover cranberry sauce!)

 

 

 

 This recipe has been updated, it was originally published in 2018.

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