The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavour profiles.
The rules for this challenge were:
- No yeast.
- Can’t take more than 1.5 hours to prepare and bake through.
- Only loaves or muffins/popovers.
Lis also provided the following quick bread primer:
Quick bread primer
- Quick breads can be sweet or savory, they are a modern innovation they became common after the introduction of baking powder and baking soda.
- Baking powder is a combination of acid and alkaline that reacts together when moistened to form gases that raises the baked quick bread. Usage 1 to 2 teaspoons per cup of flour.
- Baking soda (an alkaline salt, sodium bicarbonate) is used when the liquid is acidic, such as buttermilk, honey, molasses, tomato sauce etc. Usage ½ to 1 teaspoon per cup of acidic liquid.
- Be sure your baking powder and baking soda are fresh.
- Measure ingredients accurately, using the measuring tools and techniques suggested.
- Preheat the oven to the correct baking temperature. Arrange racks so that the bread will bake in the center of the oven which has the best heat distribution in the oven.
- To allow for good air circulation while baking, leave at least 1 inch of space between pans and between pans and sides of oven. Switch pan positions and rotate pans halfway through baking.
- The two top secrets to moist, tender quick bread is 1)in the mixing always use a quick light technique so you don’t over-mix the batter 2) don’t over-bake since this cause dryness in the final baked product. .
I was a bit nonplussed about this challenge until I realised that what Americans call quick bread is what I call my standard, easy, pretty healthy everyday cakes. Hooray! What a perfect challenge!
I got a bit excited and ended up making:
- Banana bread.
- Coconut bread.
- Orange and poppyseed muffins.
- Pumpkin bread.
The husband thought it was fantastic!
Banana bread
I love banana bread, but I prefer mine really dense and basically unsweetened (other than with banana). But there’s no challenge in making the same thing I always make, so I tried a new recipe – Joy of Baking
I left the walnuts out but otherwise did not modify the recipe. This was a big hit with the family. Not my favourite due to the level of sweetness, but I appreciated the texture.
Then I made orange and poppyseed muffins, which were particularly popular with the small people. Unfortunately I can’t remember now which recipe I used – whoops!
Coconut bread
I’m trying to cut down on sugar and also experimenting with coconut flour, so I was delighted to find a recipe that used coconut flour and seemed adaptable to being sugar free.
I found the recipe here – Bites and Bliss – how good do those photos look?! I was a bit worried that switching from US to Australian cup measurements would cause problems, but it seemed to work out fine.
This was my adapted recipe:
1.5 cups plain flour
0.5 cup coconut flour
0.5tsp baking soda
1tsp baking powder
pinch salt
75g butter
3 tbs rice malt syrup
2 eggs
1/2 cup plain low fat yoghurt
1tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup+ milk
1/2 cup shredded coconut
I will definitely be making this one again. It was delicious – moist, mostly healthy and the perfect level of sweetness (for me – husband would have liked me to follow the original recipe!).
Pumpkin quick bread
After that I got a bit experimental. So experimental, in fact, that I am not going to include a photo of the bread, which rose spectacularly before falling into a dense, pumpkinny heap. Good to eat, bad to photograph. You’ll have to take my word for it!
Overall, a good, consolidating challenge.