Home › Sandwiches and Different Breads › Quick Nut Bread
Quick Nut Bread
2 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 cup milk or water 1 cup chopped nuts 3 1/2 cups white flour (may use half graham and half white) 6 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons of melted shortening may be added to milk Beat eggs and sugar until light; add milk and nuts and mix well. Fold in flour which has been sifted with baking powder and salt. Fill bread pan half full and let stand for twenty minutes. Bake in a moderate (350 degrees) oven 45 minutes.
A plain baking-powder loaf of the type that filled tea tables and lunch boxes between the wars. The method is sound as written; a few of the proportions and instructions repay a second look.
- Pan size and yield"Bread pan" here means a loaf tin; the book does not specify a size, and a standard modern tin is the obvious substitute. The recipe asks that it be filled only half full, so with this quantity of batter you may need more than one tin, or a larger one, to obey the instruction.
- OvenThe recipe gives its own number, 350F, and that is correct for a loaf this size. Bake in the centre of the oven and test with a skewer at 45 minutes; a loaf with graham flour may want another five.
- Baking powderSix teaspoons to 3 1/2 cups of flour is generous by current practice, which runs closer to 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup. Cutting it to about four teaspoons should still lift the loaf and may reduce any faint chemical aftertaste.
- Graham flourThe optional half-and-half substitution means whole wheat flour, coarsely milled. It absorbs more liquid, so the batter will look stiffer; resist thinning it beyond a spoonful or two of extra milk.
- The twenty-minute restStanding lets the flour hydrate. Do not extend it much past the twenty minutes the recipe specifies, or some of the leavening will be spent before the loaf reaches the oven.
- Folding, not beatingThe flour is folded in deliberately. Stirring until smooth develops gluten and gives a tough, tunnelled crumb; stop while a few streaks of flour remain visible.
- NutsThe recipe specifies only "chopped nuts"; walnuts or pecans suit it. Tossing them with a spoonful of the measured flour before adding helps keep them suspended rather than sinking.
- ShorteningThe two tablespoons are optional in the original, and the recipe directs that they be stirred into the milk rather than into the eggs; melted butter can stand in. A little fat may help the loaf keep past the first day.
- CoolingTurn out onto a rack and cool completely before slicing. Quick breads cut raggedly while warm, and this one slices best the day after baking.