Steamed Apple Date Bread #BreadBakers

A quick bread cooked on the stovetop? Yes, it’s not only possible, but I highly recommend it! This steamed apple date bread is so easy to make and it is chock full of flavor with sticky dates, tart chopped apple and brown sugar.

This month my Bread Bakers event has an unusual theme: Catch up!  Our host Pavani from Cook’s Hideout proposed that we make a bread from a past Bread Bakers theme that we missed participating in.

This steamed apple date bread is my 52nd Bread Bakers recipe and, if you care to do the math that means I’ve only missed one event since I started the group in September 2014. I missed Steamed Breads in August 2017 because my daughters and I were making the cross-country trek from the Boston to Los Angeles. Truth be told though, I wasn’t that disappointed.

You see, I am not really a fan of steamed bread. It’s often pale and anemic looking and needs a filling to make it worth eating. If I wanted to participate this month, I decided that the ingredients needed to bring some color as well as flavor to my bread. Dates and brown sugar seemed like a good idea.

My neighbor and very good friend Sandra very kindly gave me some sweet dates from her date palms and she also shared her microwaveable date loaf recipe. (It’s fabulous and you’d never guess it was “baked” in the microwave!) I merged hers with one on the King Arthur website for a harvest bread steamed in a pudding bowl (the misleading accompanying photo aside), and the method for Boston brown bread steamed in coffee cans which does actually turn out cylindrical.

This bread is sooooo good! Just sweet enough with a tender crumb, great flavor and lovely color. I can now say that I like, nay LOVE, steamed bread.

Steamed Apple Date Bread

Enjoy these two loaves simply sliced, or toasted and buttered. Either way, they are perfect for breakfast, coffee breaks, snack or teatime. Without ever turning your oven on.

Ingredients
8 oz or 225g sweet ripe dates, pits removed, then chopped
1 cup, firmly packed, or 200g brown sugar
1 cup or 245g plain yogurt
1/4 cup or 60g butter
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
1 1/2 cups or 180g wholemeal flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and chopped into small pieces
2 eggs

Method
Place the chopped dates, brown sugar, yogurt and butter into a small pan and cook over a medium low heat until it starts to boil, about 4-5 minutes.

Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl and stir in the baking soda. It will get very bubbly. Set aside to cool, stirring occasionally to speed up the process. (I popped mine in the freezer for about 10 minutes as well.)

Grease the insides of two coffee cans with melted butter or non-stick baking spray. Bring a teakettle of water to a boil.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, baking powder, salt and spices. Tip in the chopped apple and stir well to coat.

In another bowl, beat the eggs. Whisk in the cooled date mixture.

Fold your wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients until just mixed.

Divide your thick batter between the two greased coffee cans.

Cover the cans with a square of baking parchment, then hold it in place with a square of aluminum foil. Secure the foil with poultry string or silicone rubber bands.

Place the coffee cans in a deep stock pot on top of a vegetable steamer or some crumpled foil so they don’t touch the bottom.

The pan should be deep enough so its lid can cover top of the coffee cans. Fill the pan with boiling water two-thirds of the way up the coffee cans. You may have to boil another kettle of water if you are using a vegetable steamer, which will lift the cans quite high off the bottom of the pot.

Cover, bring the water back to a boil and lower the heat to a simmer. Steam the two coffee cans for about 2 hours, adding water to the pot if necessary.

Remove the cans from the pot and take off the foil and parchment paper.

Leave to cool for at least 30 minutes before turning the loaves out.

Enjoy!

Check out the rest of the wonderful bread recipes my Bread Bakers are sharing today. Many thanks to Pavani of Cook’s Hideout for hosting this month.

• Adjaruli Khachapuri from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Big Batch Dinner Rolls from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Breudher Cake from Passion Kneaded
• Coriander Garlic Pull apart Bread from Sara's Tasty Buds
• Cranberry English Muffins from Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Eggless Oats Banana Bread from Gayathri's Cook Spot
• Fig Jam Friands from All That's Left Are the Crumbs
• Garlic Cheese and Herbs Pull Apart Bread from Ambrosia
• Herbed Wholewheat Garlic Knots from Sizzling Tastebuds
• Keema Naan from The Schizo Chef
• Peperoncini Focaccia Bread from Sneha's Recipe
• Savory Almond Meal Bread from Palatable Pastime
• Sourdough Cinnamon Buns from Baking Sense
• Steamed Apple Date Bread from Food Lust People Love
• Vegan Gluten-free Banana Bread from Cook's Hideout
• Whole Wheat Palak Naan from Cook with Renu
• Yeasted Lemon Bundt Cake from Anybody Can Bake

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Steamed Apple Date Bread!

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Ponco - Bacon-fried Batter #BreadBakers

Ponco is a traditional Welsh breakfast recipe of batter fried in flavorful bacon fat. Made with flour, milk and eggs (or sometimes just flour and milk) ponco is cheap and filling but, oh so delicious!

A few months ago, I visited Wales for the first time to stay with a dear friend who had recently moved there. Despite still learning her way around, she was an excellent tour guide, enlisting her mother and father in a couple of our expeditions since they have lived in Wales for many, many years.

But one day we struck out on our own to climb the town and castle walls around Conwy which date back to medieval times. High up above the town, we had lovely views of houses and shops and even the sea. We enjoyed a delicious pub lunch in town and headed home by way of the beach road, popping into a few shops on the way.

In one tiny book store, I came across a small book of recipes called Croeso Cymreig - A Welsh Welcome. Recipes for Some Traditional Welsh Dishes. Published in 1957 by the Wales Gas Board, it was full of old-fashioned and traditional recipes, many with vague instructions and random units of measure, when they were included at all. Of course, I had to buy it.

This month for Bread Bakers, our host Felice from All That’s Left Are The Crumbs chose breakfast bread as our theme. I like to try different breads from different cultures so I googled British breakfast breads, among other things.

A Welsh recipe call ponco popped up a number of times. It sounded like a cross between an American pancake and a French crepe but fried in bacon fat, an idea I was totally for. The recipes I found didn’t have very accurate measures but the idea was to make a batter with eggs, milk and flour or sometimes, I guess when times were tough, just flour and milk. Or even, God forbid, water.

It suddenly occurred to check A Welsh Welcome. Sure enough, ponco was there! Its measurements were just as sketchy though. And this was the first time I saw the suggestion to eat it with meat and vegetables. Everywhere else it was a breakfast dish.

Sure two teacups of flour, but how much milk? And no eggs in this case.

Ponco - Bacon-fried Batter 

Without a definitive recipe to go on, I winged it.  This makes one large ponco about 9-10 inches or 23-25cm across. If you have a cast iron pan, use that for the frying. Cast iron won't cool as fast when you pour the batter in, which means the bacon grease stays hotter too and that means a more even color and slightly crunchy ponco. Which is what we want.

Ingredients
1 cup or 125g flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 – 2/3 cup or 120-156ml milk
1/4 cup or 60ml bacon grease

Method
Whisk the flour together with the baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl. Add in the egg and 1/2 cup or 120ml of the milk. Whisk briskly.

Add more milk as necessary to get a medium thick batter – not a thick as for American pancakes, not as thin as for French crepes.

Warm your bacon grease in a large pan over a medium high heat, until it starts to shimmer. (Ideally, you will have cooked your bacon in this same pan and removed all but about 1/4 cup or 60ml of the grease, so that there are little sticky bits from bacon still in there.)

All at once, pour in the batter and turn the heat down to medium.

Cook the ponco until the bottom is golden and little bubbles form and pop all over it, with just the very center still liquid. This takes just a few minutes. I let it cook just a minute or so longer than this.

Turn it over very careful so you don’t splash hot bacon grease on yourself and cook the other side till golden. You can see here how some of the sticky bacon bits have become one with the ponco. So good!

I placed the ponco on a couple of paper towels briefly to absorb excess grease when I took it out of the pan, but honestly, it was surprisingly not very greasy. Some of the Welsh ponco recipes I found said to serve it with butter and bacon. I’d also suggest some golden syrup or honey to join the butter in filling those wonderful holes.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to Felice from All That’s Left Are The Crumbs for hosting this month. Check out all the great breakfast bread recipes!

• Blueberry Buttermilk Scones by Mayuri’s Jikoni
• Blueberry Scone Bread by The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Breakfast Monkey Bread by Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Butter Enriched Milk Bread by Ambrosia
• Carrot Paneer Parathas by Sneha's Recipe
• Easy Sourdough Popovers by Cook's Hideout
• Jalapeño and Cheddar Bagels by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Low Carb Cinnamon Raisin Biscuits by Palatable Pastime
• Multigrain Aloo Methi Paratha by Sizzling Tastebuds
• Paczki with Lemon Cream Filling by All That’s Left Are The Crumbs
• Ponco - Bacon-fried Batter by Food Lust People Love
• Spice Island Breakfast Muffins by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Vegetable and Tofu Steamed Bao by Herbivore Cucina
• Yogurt Honey Wholemeal Loaf by Cook with Renu

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it! 

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Feta Sun-Dried Tomato Quick Bread #BreadBakers

A savory loaf that would be as welcome for breakfast as for lunch or dinner, this feta sun-dried tomato quick bread is delightful on its own, or smeared with butter or cream cheese.

I have to be honest, I’ve never really thought about the color of bread. The desired delicious ingredients go in and it turns out the color it turns out, right? Well, this month for Bread Bakers our host Mireille of The Schizo Chef challenged us to bake colorful breads, using only natural colorants. Of course, breads have to taste good, but suddenly color became important too.

I started my search for ideas by looking up natural ways to dye Easter eggs and homemade Play-Do. Loads of good ideas but none of them sounded particularly tasty. And then it popped into my head: Sun-dried tomatoes! Those are both tasty and colorful, plus I have a bagful of homemade sun-dried tomatoes. And since I wasn’t sure just how colorful those would be, I added some ground annatto as well.

The original recipe for this very adapted version comes from the long, deep rabbit hole that is the interwebs. I found it first on gottagetbaked, but as I read the post, my friend Nancy revealed that she had adapted it from this recipe by Jen at Juanita’s Cocina. Oh, good. A source to quote, I thought.

But that wasn’t the end of the trail. Jen had actually made the bread as part of a Secret Recipe post using instructions from Debra at Eliot’s Eats. Sooooo, I clicked through. Turns out that Deb was inspired to create the recipe after reading the essay Ploughman’s Lunch from Outlaw Cook* by John Thorne and Matt Lewis Thorne.

And there was a whole afternoon happily gone. But never wasted.

Feta Sun-dried Tomato Quick Bread

This recipe is adapted from one called “A Simple Plowman’s Lunch: Beer, Onion and Cheese Bread” from Elliot’s Eats. If you haven’t met Deb yet, go on over and pay her a visit. She’s got some great recipes.

Ingredients (1 standard loaf)
1/2 cup or 45g sun-dried tomatoes
1 tablespoon oil
1 medium onion, peeled and minced
7 oz or 200g feta cheese, crumbled
3 cups or 375g all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground annatto
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
12 oz or 355ml beer – use a lager rather than an ale or bitter
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon oregano, optional

N.B. If, like mine, your can of beer is only 11 oz or 330ml, make up the difference in the volume with the water used to rehydrate the sun-dried tomatoes.

Tip: Making your own sun-dried tomatoes is easy! Check out my simple instructions here: Homemade sun-dried tomatoes.

Method
Divide the sun-dried tomatoes into two equal piles. Chop one into small pieces with a sharp knife. In a small bowl, pour boiling water to cover over the other pile. Set aside to rehydrate. Depending on how dried your tomatoes are, they could take up to an hour to plump back up and you might need to top up with more water.

Use a mortar and pestle or electric spice grinder to make a powder out of it the chopped pile.

Meanwhile, heat a small skillet over medium heat with oil. Sauté the onion for 10-12 minutes, or until it is translucent. Set the pan aside and allow the onion to cool.

When the tomatoes are plump and soft, drain and reserve the soaking water, if you need it for extra liquid. (See ingredient list.) Chop the tomatoes roughly.

Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Line a standard loaf pan with baking parchment.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, annatto powder and salt. Add the crumbled cheese, cooled onions and chopped sun-dried tomatoes and toss everything together so that the other ingredients are evenly mixed into the flour.

Add the beer and honey to the flour and fold until all ingredients are incorporated and there are no dry bits of flour.

Spoon the thick dough into the prepared bread pan and smooth the top of the dough. Sprinkle on some oregano, if desired.

Bake the loaf for 40-45 minutes, or until the top of the loaf is a golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Allow the bread to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning the loaf out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Slice and serve. It’s great natural or toasted, plain or embuttered or, since I like to gild the lily, spread with softened cream cheese.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to our host, Mireille from The Schizo Chef for this fun challenge! Check out all the naturally colorful breads we have for you this month!

• Cheesy Kale, Tomato and Chile Focaccia from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Coriander Butterflake Bread from Gayathri's Cook Spot
• Coriander Cumin Bread from Sizzling Tastebuds
• Feta Sun-dried Tomato Quick Bread from Food Lust People Love
• Purple Yam Sweet Potato Bread from The Schizo Chef
• Spinach Beetroot Wheat Bread from Anybody Can Bake
• Spinach Sandwich Rolls from Cook's Hideout
• Tangzhong Method Spinach Bread from Sneha's Recipe
• Turmeric & Garlic Pull Apart Bread from Mayuri's Jikoni

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it!

*Amazon affiliate link

Spring Onion Rosemary Cheese Quick Bread

This Spring Onion Rosemary Cheese Quick Bread is easy to make, no yeast, no kneading, no trouble. Just full on flavor and an excellent crumb!

Cairo days

The heater is broken again.  Well, not exactly broken but all the wires that connect it to power have apparently burned up and melted into a molten non-conductive mess.  This happened on Thursday night, of course, because our weekend starts on Friday.  And it's still COLD!

So Friday I made soup – will post that recipe later because it turned out quite delicious – and yesterday I baked bread.  This recipe was adapted from one of my favorites, from the great doyenne of British cookery, Delia Smith.  Her version was with goat cheese and thyme but I have figured out that you can put any cheese and any herb and this will taste fantastic.

Spring Onion Rosemary Cheese Quick Bread

As mentioned above, you can switch out the cheese for any of your favorites, except perhaps something too soft and runny like Camembert or Brie. I fear those might melt completely out of the bread when baked. 

Ingredients

4 oz  or 110g strong cheese of your choice (I used a combo of blue and cheddar.)

4 spring onions, finely sliced

1 medium potato weighing approximately 6 oz or 175g

At least 1 rounded tablespoon fresh herbs (I used rosemary this time.) plus a few extra leaves for the top when baking

6 oz or 175g flour

1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon or generous pinch of cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon English mustard powder

1 large egg

2 tablespoons milk

Olive oil for greasing the cookie sheet

Method

Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Pare the rind from the cheese, if there is one, and cut it into 1/2 inch or 1 cm cubes.  Remove the rosemary leaves from the stalks and mince all but a few.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a big, roomy mixing bowl, holding the sieve up high to give the flour a good airing.

Peel the potato and grate it straight into the flour, using the coarse side of the grater.  Lightly mix the potato in with a fork. 

Mince your spring onions.  

Add the spring onions, rosemary and two-thirds of the cheese to the potato/flour bowl.  Add in the cayenne and mustard powder.

Still using a fork, gently mix everything thoroughly.

After that, beat the egg with the milk, then pour the mixture into the bowl, just bringing it all together to a loose, rough dough, still using your fork.  It will seem too dry to come together but just keep mixing and turning the bowl and the dough and your patience will be rewarded.   It will come together.

Rub a little olive oil on your baking sheet and transfer the dough on top of the oil.

Pat it gently into a 6-inch or 15 cm rough round.  

Now lightly press the rest of the cheese over the surface, and scatter the reserved rosemary leaves over it as well.

Bake the bread on the middle shelf of the oven for 45-50 minutes or until golden brown.  

Remove it to a cooling rack or cutting board and serve it still warm if possible.  We slathered ours with butter and called it lunch! 

Enjoy!