Sweet Brown Quick Bread

No return of cooking mojo would be complete (at least for me) without a new fresh loaf of bread.

As you have probably noticed, I like making bread.  A lot.  And I like to try a different kind of bread each time.

For this little foray into the bread world, I thought I’d try a brown bread.

And when I saw this recipe as a quick bread, I knew I wanted to give it a try.

The Recipe:

Sweet Brown Bread, adapted from GroupRecipes.com 

1 ¼ c whole wheat flour

1 t baking powder

½ t baking soda

½ t cinnamon

1/4 t salt

½ c buttermilk

1 egg

3 T molasses

1 T honey

2 T dark brown sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a loaf pan.

Combine flour, baking powder, lemon zest, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.  Separately, combine the remaining ingredients.  Add the wet mix to the dry ingredients and blend. Do not over-mix.  Pour into pan and bake 40 minutes, or until the edges are slightly browned.

Cool 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack and cooling completely.

{Printable Recipe}

The Results:

This was definitely not what I was expecting – but not in a bad way.  Just in a different way.

As I was mixing the batter, it seemed overwhelmingly molasses-y, so I added that extra tablespoon of honey – to try to counter it.  The aroma of the kitchen while it was baking reminded me of Christmas for some reason, but I was completely okay with that.

When done, the overall flavor was sweet, yet still very molassess-y.  The crust was almost crunchy, but in a molasses cookie way.  My son actually asked if it was gingerbread bread.  It was very tasty warm with a dollop of butter and could almost stand as a dessert.  We ate it at dinner with Hubs’ chicken and dumplings, and the bread actually complimented it very well.

For turning out completely differently that I thought it would, I was still very, very satisfied.  The whole family liked it, which is quite rare around here.

Now, I just got to get back into making dinner, too.  🙂