Cranberry Apple Stuffing (2024)

This Cranberry Apple Stuffing recipes has all the classic flavors of your favorite old-fashioned Thanksgiving stuffing. Plus I have an easy tip to make sure your stuffing turns out perfect every time!

Stuffing or dressing? I grew up calling it stuffing, and even though this recipe is technically dressing because it doesn’t get “stuffed” into the turkey, I still call it stuffing. Whatever you call it, I think that we can all agree that stuffing is the BEST part of Thanksgiving. And guys, I have FINALLY come up with the best stuffing recipe. Even though stuffing is my favorite thanksgiving dish, for years I struggled with figuring out how to make the best stuffing from scratch. My stuffing always came out not quite right, and I could never figure out why. Well, friends, let me tell you I finally figured it out and it is the most simple thing.

It’s all about the bread. It makes sense, because the classic, old fashioned stuffing is a bread based recipe. But I made many mistakes over the years with the bread I chose for stuffing. Sometimes I would buy bags of pre-made cubed and dried bread to save a step. Although it does save a step, I found that it is NOT WORTH IT. My stuffing was disappointing every time

Then I started buying fancy, artisanal crusty loaves of bread from the fancy part of the bakery. Although I prefer that kind of bread for eating, it turns out it does NOT make the best stuffing. The texture of the bread is everything. You need bread that has some body and can hold up to the moisture in the stuffing without turning to mush, but also won’t suck up all the liquid and make the stuffing dry. Enter, the only bread you should use for stuffing.

Just plain old country white sandwich bread! This humble loaf of bread is the perfect bread for stuffing. You don’t want to go with the cheapest white bread you can find though. I bought a loaf of Oroweat (known as Arnold on the East Coast) Country White Bread. It was perfect! Then you want to make sure to toast your bread instead of just leaving it out overnight to get stale. This will create a much better texture in your final stuffing. It might be an extra step, but it’s thanksgiving so I think it’s worth it. This Cranberry Apple Stuffing is some of the best stuffing I have ever made. It goes perfectly with my Herb Butter Roasted Turkey!