Honey Oat Quick Bread

Worry not, a blog about my race is forthcoming. I'm waiting on some pictures before I recount my experience. Hint: it was awesome!

For now, I will confess how domesticated/insane I have become now that I'm on break from school: I decided to start baking my own bread. Before you dismiss this entirely, have you ever read the ingredient list on a package of wheat bread? It's terrifying. So far, I have made two loaves of quick bread (meaning no yeast), and they are so delicious. This week I plan to try out a traditional wheat bread to see how time/labor intensive it is. My thinking is that I can bang out a loaf of regular bread each week, and if we run out and I don't have time to make another, I can whip up this quick bread in under two hours. Here is the recipe, which I got from Eating Well. I followed it with only two tiny changes:

Honey Oat Quick Bread 


1 cup oatmeal (not instant)
1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
8 oz plain yogurt (I used a 6 oz container of plain greek yogurt with no issues)
1 large egg
1/4 cup canola oil (I used olive oil and you couldn't taste it once the bread was finished.)
1/4 cup honey
3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 375˚

Coat your loaf pan (as you can see, I used a round casserole dish because I didn't have a loaf pan at the time, and it worked fine. Any bakeware of reasonable size will do the trick) with cooking spray and sprinkle a tablespoon of the oatmeal in, shaking the pan to coat all sides. I now have a nonstick loaf pan, so I skipped this step the second time I made this.

Mix the wheat flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt thoroughly in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, beat the oats, egg, yogurt, oil and honey until blended. Stir in the milk. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture, stirring until just mixed (don't over mix any sort of bread/pastry product or it will not be light and fluffy). Scrape the mixture into your baking pan immediately and spread it around so that it's relatively flat. Sprinkle a bit of oatmeal on top.

Bake for 40-50 minutes, until it's very brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Both times I made this, I had to bake for the full 50 minutes. Let stand in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Loosen bread with a knife, and then turn onto the rack. Let cool completely, for about 45 more minutes (if you can resist taking a little taste, that is!)

The cool thing about this bread is that I always have all of these ingredients on hand, and it is ready to eat in 2 hours from start to finish. Next time I am going to try replacing the oil with applesauce for ultimate health.