Sunday Bread - Strawberry Bread

by: Something The Dog Said

Sun Jun 03, 2012 at 06:41:07 AM PDT

Happy Sunday Bread Heads!

So the summer is upon us and that means that all kinds of great fruits are available, or about to be available. Right now it is time for those luscious treats known as Strawberries are in season. To celebrate this, I thought we'd make a Strawberry bread.

This bread is a quick bread, and while we're going to make it during the season for this particular fruit it is one of the few recipes that I make that can use frozen fruit just as well as the fresh, so be sure to book mark this recipe for the when you need a little reminder of summer in the depths of the next winter!

There is not a lot to this bread; most of the liquid comes from the mashed strawberries. To balance it a little bit I used dark brown sugar, rather than a white sugar, it makes the bread a little more rich, and keeps the large amounts of strawberries from overwhelming the flavor of the bread itself.

So, let's bake!  

Ingredients:

4 cups all purpose flour
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder (if you are baking at over 5,000 feet reduce this by half)
2 teaspoons baking soda (if you are baking at over 5,000 feet, reduce this by half)
3 tablespoons of butter at room temperature
2 eggs
4 cups fresh or frozen strawberries
4 teaspoons fresh lemon zest

Baking pans - 2 8" x 4" loaf pans, greased with butter

Method:
Place a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat it to 350 degrees.

Wash and stem the strawberries. Cut them into quarters and place in a large bowl. I like to use a potato masher to mash these but anything that will crush them into small pieces will work just fine. Set this aside.

In your large mixing bowl or the work bowl of your stand mixer, beat together the butter and eggs. Beat in the brown sugar.

In another bowl (yeah I know, lots of bowls in this recipe, it is what it is), combine the flour, backing powder and baking soda.

Add the flour mixture to the butter and brown sugar mixture and stir until combined. It is going to be rather dry and grainy, don't worry, when you add the mashed strawberries and their juice it will be a nice batter.

Add the strawberries and stir for one minute, just until everything is a uniform texture (except the strawberries, of course!).

Spoon into your prepared loaf pans. Slide the pans into the hot oven and bake for 50 minutes. Test for doneness by sliding a toothpick into the center of the loaves. It should come out clean but slightly damp.

If the loaves aren't done, return to the oven for up to 10 minutes.

Remove the pans from the oven and let them stand on a wire cooling rack for 5 minutes before turning the done loaves out, to finish cooling. Be careful with the warm loaves, this is a very tender bread and can break if you don't handle them gently.

Allow the bread to cool completely before cutting.

So there you have it Bread Heads, a simple, quick and delicious way to use your strawberries this summer. Be sure to serve the bread with a little bit of cream cheese for a real special treat!

The flour is yours!