I absolutly love crab apple trees for the foliage and flowers, and planted
a fairly new growth one last year from the local garden center. When it
bloomed I noticed that it is the bearing fruit kind and wondered if there
was a way to avoid it from bearing fruit but still flower.

If you like the tree otherwise & don't want to replace it, you can probably get
a hormone spray which will greatly reduce or eliminate the fruit. Ask at a
large garden center.
Iris,
Central NY, Zone 5a, Sunset Zone 40
"If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming
train."
Robert Lowell (1917-1977)