Sweet

• Two things make a good baking apple, and both have to do with staying power. The first is whether the apple pieces hold their shape through the baking process. This is more important with pies than bread, but it's still relevant. The second, and more important, is that the apple retains its flavor. No matter how sweet, an apple that falls to mush and tastes like it, is not what you want for your recipe. Four sweet apples that have strong cooking characteristics are Criterion, Golden Delicious, Jonagold and Nittany. Of the four, only Criterion may be better for eating fresh than baking. The other three are excellent all-purpose apples with a sweet flavor.

Tart

• Most apples have a certain amount of tartness to them, blending with the sweet in complex flavor. In truly tart varieties, the tartness dominates over sweet, most noticeably in the case of Granny Smith apples. The tartness can sometimes be overwhelming for eating fresh, but tart apple pieces can offer a delightful counterpoint of taste in an otherwise sweet bread. Cortland, Granny Smith, Idared, Jonathan, Newtown Pipin and Rome Beauty, also called Red Rome, are all tart apples whose flavor and form hold up well for baking.

Sweet and Tart

• There's an indefinable middle ground between sweet and tart that may depend as much on the growing season as on the apple variety itself. When people taste the same apple variety, one may call it a sweet apple with a bit of tartness while another may call it tart with hints of sweetness. If you want a definitively sweet or tart apple, you're better off choosing a variety known for that specific characteristic. However, those that are harder to pinpoint in terms of flavor can be some of the most complex apples for the palate. For all-around pleasing in terms of taste, these varieties offer complex flavor that holds up to baking: Braeburn, Cameo, Empire and Stayman, also called Stayman Winesap.