The Baker's Dozen-Harvest Bread

 

The Bakers's Dozen-Harvest Bread

Welcome to my new winter baking project! Those of you who have been following along with my Christmas project got a taste of it last week. Each week, I will be testing a recipe of mine to see how it turns out, and sharing the experience here. Last week was the bonus week, so this is the start of the true project, which will go for the next 12 weeks. This week, I made a quick bread. Here is the recipe.

Harvest Bread(source unknown)

Cooking Spray

2 cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups sugar

3/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup buttermilk

3 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

2 cups grated peeled carrots

1(7oz) pkg. flaked sweetened coconut

1 cup chopped walnuts

1(8.25oz) can crushed pineapple in heavy syrup, drained

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Spray 9"x5" loaf pan with cooking spray. Cut 15"x4" strip of parchment paper. Line bottom and narrow sides of loaf pan with parchment paper, leaving overhang. Spray paper with cooking spray.

Whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in large bowl. Whisk sugar, vegetable oil, buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla in medium bowl to blend. Add sugar mixture to flour mixture; stir just to blend. Add carrots, coconut, walnuts, and pineapple; stir to distribute evenly.

Transfer batter to prepared loaf pan. Bake until tester tests clean, about 1.5 hours. Cool 10 minutes. Run sharp knife around edges of pan. Invert bread onto rack; remove parchment paper. Turn bread over and cool completely.

(Can be prepared 2 days ahead. Store in airtight container at room temperature.)

Makes 1 loaf

I always have to start off with the obligatory shot of all the ingredients gathered around because I think it's fun to see how much goes into making something!

Here we have the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients. One of the biggest changes to the recipe that I made was with the sugar. I couldn't in good conscience add two whole cups of sugar to something that only makes one loaf. One of my tricks I've learned over the years is that you can replace some of the sugar in baked goods, with unsweetened applesauce, and it doesn't affect the texture too much. Back in the 90's, people replaced fat in recipes with applesauce and it was disgusting, but that's because they were replacing the wrong ingredient. I cut it down to 1 cup of sugar, and used 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce.

Here is the dry and wet ingredients mixed with the add-ins ready to be mixed in. This is basically a carrot cake in bread form. If I had it to do over again, I would have added raisins as well, because I am one of those people who does like raisins in baked goods.

The fully-mixed batter. You will think it's impossible to fill one pan, but it works.

As you can see, it goes right to the top of the pan, but not over. I actually had to stop at this point and move on to some other stuff without baking the bread, so I just covered it in plastic wrap and threw it in the fridge till I was ready to bake.

It took a lot longer than 1.5 hours for this to bake through. After that time, I turned up the oven to 350 degrees and put foil on the top to keep it from browning too much. I don't know if it's because I changed the sugar amount in the recipe, but it just took a lot longer. I don't see any reason why you couldn't bake this at 350 degrees for the whole time. That might take just the 1.5 hours. Just keep an eye on it, and you'll be fine.

This was actually a little hard to turn over once you take it out of the pan. It's very hot and dense and heavy, so you need to turn it quickly so you don't lose momentum and tear it in the middle.

Here is what the bread looks like once you cut it open. There's a lot going on with this bread! The coconut, carrots, pineapple, and walnuts all add textures and flavors to the bread. There's not a lot of flour in this recipe, compared to all the other stuff you put in it, so it's really important to wait until it's thoroughly cooled to help the shape hold up, and the flavors set. And of course butter on this is a must!

This was not a difficult bread to make, most quick breads are super easy to make, which is why we love to make them! This one is very different from zucchini bread or banana bread. It's fancier and in a way, it feels healthier because of all the carrots and walnuts. I do think it's a bit healthier than the original recipe when you cut out half the sugar, but don't convince yourself that this is health foods cuz there's plenty of unhealthy stuff in it!! You do get a little exercise from this too, with all the grating you have to do. That way you can put extra butter on the bread and not feel too bad about it!