Quick bread recipe

A single of the most beautiful factors about the holidays is that all our traditional markers blur. Lazy mornings stretch on. Men and women drop by unexpectedly. Tea and coffee are created. You perform cards and Monopoly and do the crossword. You stay in your jammies all day. Appropriately, the line among breakfast and lunchtime—breakfast and dessert, too—blurs. There are the cinnamon rolls and French toasts and leftover slices of pie, all breakfasty indeed, but it’s the swift bread that greatest occupies this middle area. Excellent in your jammies, excellent with coffee, and very good with firm, rapid breads are far much more cake than bread. They are, for the most component, decidedly sweet, tender and moist, and leavened not with yeast but with baking powder or soda or both. And they bake up so quickly and with so minor fussing that they’re ideal for final-minute holiday brunches and presents for your hosts or coworkers—even if you’re “not a baker.”

Let’s speak for a minute more about their fusslessness: Fast bread recipes are hard to mess up, which implies you can play and perform and perform, and your resulting loaf will be, far more frequently than not, satisfied to perform along. Use the recipe under as a base to consider your bread from lemon poppyseed to panettone-inflected to classic banana. Want something much more chocolatey? Substitute cocoa powder for some of the flour, powerful coffee for some of the milk, and include a big handful of chocolate chips. If you’re looking for anything entire-grainy, use whole wheat flour, buttermilk, and the smallest volume of sugar, and then add nuts and seeds to your heart’s content material. (And don’t forget to perform!)

Added-Customizable Swift Bread for Any Occasion

A lot more Things to Perform With

Spices (think cinnamon, nutmeg, five-spice, allspice, ground ginger—and start off slow)

Espresso powder (specifically great with chocolate—and in banana bread)

Zests (commence with the zest of two lemons, limes, or tangerines, or one grapefruit or navel orange)

Additions of nut butter or tahini

Layers of streusel

Best the entire issue off with glazes! A number of ideas to get you going:

All-objective flour + complete wheat flour + coconut oil + coconut flakes + almond extract + almond milk

Entire wheat flour + olive oil + tangerine zest + currants

All-goal flour + rye flour + brown butter + brown sugar + oats + pumpkin seeds

Ingredients

How to Make It

Preheat the oven to 350° F and grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan. Set aside.

Mix the eggs, milk, oil, vanilla extract, sweetener, baking powder, and salt, stirring until completely integrated. If you’d like to add any zests or spices, do so now, stirring nicely. Gently stir in the flour and any bigger additions (like oats or nuts), stirring right up until just combined—too much stirring will lead to a dense loaf!

Scrape the batter into the ready pan, and sprinkle something—coconut flakes, pumpkin or sesame or sunflower seeds, oats, demerara sugar—over the best, if you like. Bake, turning as soon as halfway by way of, for 35 to 50 minutes. (The time will fluctuate primarily based on the variety of flour you use, amongst other issues.) Take away from the oven when the top is golden and company to the touch, and a knife or toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Allow great in the pan till cool enough to manage, then take away by working your knife all around the sides, lifting up gently, and meticulously flip the pan above and tip the loaf out. Try your hardest to allow it amazing entirely before slicing.

The bread will hold for 3 to four days at space temperature—but my favorite way to retailer swift bread is sliced in a zip-leading bag in the freezer (for up to 3 or 4 months), so that all I have to do when I want a piece (or am scrambling for breakfast in the morning) is to pull out a slice and toast it.