Zucchini Bread
I know there are a bazillion recipes out there for zucchini bread, but I thought I'd add mine to the mix. Although, I should say that it's not really mine! I got it from Cook's Illustrated's Country Cooking website when I had a free trial.
Interestingly enough, though, I just found another Cook's recipe for zucchini bread in my Baking Illustrated book. It's almost exactly the same, except that instead of 1 ½ cups of sugar, it only calls for ¾ cup. I'll give that a try and let you know if cutting the sugar by half produces good results. 1 ½ cups has always seemed like an awful lot of sugar for one loaf of bread!
What makes this recipe a little different than most is that you squeeze the liquid out of the zucchini, which helps to prevent that most common of problems, which is the dense/wet spot at the bottom of the loaf. Also, squeezing the liquid out means that you can fit more zucchini into a loaf. An entire pound of zucchini goes into each 9x5 inch loaf, so if you have a glut of the green squash, this is a good recipe to use.
Happily, this is a very simple recipe....mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, combine, and bake. If you need some pictures, though, read on. 😉
First, shred a pound of unpeeled zucchini. This ends up being about three cups, although it looks like more than that in the picture.
To rid the zucchini of its excess liquid, wrap it in a tea towel and squeeze until you can release no more juice. Your zucchini will have lost about a cup of volume, so you should end up with about 2 cups now. Again, I took this picture from a bad angle, so it looks like more than 2 cups. ( Note to self: move farther down when photographing measuring cups.)
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
And mix the wet ingredients together. I like to use my handy-dandy egg beaters for this.
Add the zucchini and wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix gently until it's all just combined. If you recall from our gluten lesson, since this is a non-yeast bread, you do not want to develop a lot of gluten. So, use a light hand with the mixing.
Although the Cook's recipe doesn't specify this, I like to mix the zucchini in with the egg mixture before I add it to the dry ingredients. This allows me to do slightly less mixing once the wet and dry ingredients are combined.
Pour the batter into a greased 9x5 inch pan.
And bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack completely before slicing, as quick breads are nearly impossible to slice while warm.
Zucchini Bread
1 pound zucchini, shredded, with excess liquid squeezed out (about 2 cups of squeezed zucchini)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups sugar
¼ cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon lemon juice
6 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 °F. Generously coat a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan with cooking spray.
Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a large bowl. In a small bowl whisk together sugar, yogurt, eggs, lemon juice, and butter until combined. Gently fold yogurt mixture and zucchini into flour mixture using a spatula until just combined. Transfer batter to prepared pan.
Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs attached, 45 to 55 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes in pan, then turn out onto wire rack to cool for at least 1 hour. Bread can be wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature for 3 days.
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So, that's the last of my zucchini recipes for this week, as Food Waste Friday will be the post for tomorrow. I do have one other recipe for zucchini, which I've shared it before. If you prefer your zucchini to be free of sugar and flour, check out my Hibachi Chicken and Shrimp recipe.
And if you have some other good ideas for using up zucchini, leave a comment and share with us.
Hello,
I can't thank you enough for taking the time to write all these wonderful material and for the lovely photos!
I found you via the No Impact Man's site...and, really, your zuchinni posts could not be any more timely! My zuchinni crop was not great this year, but a few days ago I found them on sale...so I bought them. Made them pan roasted with a drizzle of balsamic, steamed with pasta carbonara...but I had completely forgotten of the endless possibilities in the baking department...I am going to try one of the recipes you posted next...would not hurt if I put some dark chocolate chips on that zuchinni bread, right? I mean, you won't tell anyone, no? 🙂
In an effort to make this zucchini bread less healthy 🙂 I wanted to say that my mom always put a good handful of chocolate chips in her zucchini bread. It was so good, just gave it a slight edge of sweetness.
I'm wondering if you could use bananas in this instead to make banana bread. My mom had an old pumpkin bread recipe that she used to make banana bread but she gave the recipe to my sister and she lost it. We've been trying to replace it ever since. This looks very close to that recipe.
I think bananas would need different spices. More cinnamon and honey. No cloves or allspice. For example my zucchini bread recipe says that you can use pumpkin but omit the vanilla. Good luck!
I grated some zucchini and there was no liquid to drain, it even sat in the fridge overnight. I made my zucchini bread, much like your recipe and the bread was dry. We have had a wet summer. I think it is the type of zucchini that I am growing. I have made zucchini bread for more than 30 years and never had this happen.
Huh! that IS odd, because usually zucchini is super wet.
Your zucchini recipe is just in time for me. I was just given one huge zucchini from a neighbor. It's too big and tough to use in stir fry, so I was thinking zucchini fritters and bread would be good.
Thanks so much!
Yum! I'm currently eating a slice of this for breakfast and it is so good! I didn't have any allspice on hand so I used a dash of nutmeg instead. This reminds me a little bit of coffeecake, but with zucchini. MMM. I haven't tried a recipe of yours I didn't like--I think next week I'll make those zucchini patties and maybe the French bread pizzas (I've made your French bread before, but haven't used it for pizzas).
This looks really good. It's also a great way to get my kids to eat vegetables sense they only like carrots.
My mom gave me her nestle cook book a few years ago, but I've been having a hard time translating it form Spanish to English. Do you know if 180 C is 350 F?
I have no idea! Maybe do some googling?
Do you have spies in my house? 😉 I made 2 loaves of zuc bread last night and zuc chocolate chip cookies - from the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I was just thinking of trying a different bread recipe and here you have saved me the trouble of looking one up.
I have added nuts, whatever's on hand 2/3 cup, and raisins, 2/3 cup to my zuc bread. This is for 2 loaves.
I like this one that uses yogurt. (4th time was a charm Kristen!) I also used duck eggs last night. These were included in my last order of eggs. Great to cook with.
YES! 350 F is 176.67 C or 180 if you round up. Don't you wish everything was in metric?
Yes, this is handy for using up the last bits of yogurt in the jar!
Okay Kristen, I brought home a scary big zucchini from work, which I made into 15 cups of zucchini-shreds. I froze a dozen cups and made a single loaf of this bread.
I used one cup of sugar and threw a handful of chocolate chips in for good measure.
I will be up late, but the kitchen is warm and the house will smell good.
I'll let you know how it turned out.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
"Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without"
Yes, this is also my favorite as well! I'm making it as I type! :). In fact, because of this recipe, and a gingerbread recipe from King Arthur Flour, I've discovered that my favorite autumnal spice blend consists of cinnamon, ginger, and allspice!