S.KRAUSE

In the Kitchen with Krause #9

Strawberry Bread

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 10 oz. strawberries
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 cup nuts, optional

Directions:

1. Grease and flour the bottom of a 9"x5" pan; preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
2. In small or medium bowl beat the eggs, sugar, and oil.
3. Add the salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda and stir.
4. Stir in the strawberries.
5. Add the flour and stir until moist; add a half cup of chopped nuts if desired.
6. Pour batter into the greased and floured pan and bake at 350F/175C for 50–60 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the middle of the loaf comes out clean.

Play-by-Play:

Saturday afternoon after the Love Parade I stopped by my local SPAR for weekend groceries ... water, pudding, that sort of stuff, and as I was standing at the register the cashier asked if I wanted any strawberries. 79 cents for a container, and I thought to myself, why not? I can make strawberry-nut bread.

So I bought the strawberries, the last strawberries in the store, went home, began to wash them, and realized I had no nuts. Since it was still early enough I could have walked back down the stairs, out the building, around the corner, and into the market to pick up a package or two, but I was feeling lazy and dehydrated after hours of walking, so I decided to go for straight strawberry bread ... the nuts are optional.

Task number 1: rinse the strawberries, chop off the tops, and slice. Frozen strawberries work as well if you let them thaw and drain first. The recipe calls for 10oz., and I had just about 20, so I made one loaf Saturday, put the remaining berries in the refrigerator, and made the second loaf Sunday afternoon.

Set the berries aside. Crack two eggs into a bowl, add the cup of sugar, and the oil. Beat/mix well. The similarities between this and the carrot-nut bread on the one hand and banana-nut bread on the other indicate the fat flexibility here ... butter or vegetable oil ... melted shortening would work as well.

You have beaten the egg-sugar-oil mixture enough once the oil has smoothly integrated with the rest; at first it will remain separate and even stringy.

At this point I added the rest of the non-flour dry ingredients. There is no need to be stingy with the cinnamon and nutmeg.

This batter is not prepared over heat and it is just a matter of throwing the ingredients together, so normally I would add the strawberries next (analogous to the ingredient order in the banana-nut bread recipe), but this time I went flour-first, mixing one cup of all-purpose white flour and one cup of wheat flour. I then stirred in the strawberries. In my carrot-nut bread I use finely shredded carrots, and I mash my bananas nearly to the texture of baby food for banana-nut bread, but not so with the strawberries, which I leave chunky ... the result is seen at the end.

Into a greased and floured (bottom only) pan the batter is poured; it is rather thick. Then into the oven it goes. As with similar recipes I begin at 175C, turn off the top element after about 15 minutes, and toward the end turn down the temperature. This is oven-specific. After 50 minutes I check for doneness, and at close to 60 I removed the loaf.

I let the loaf cool in the pan for 10–15 minute, or until I could handle it without a towel or similar heat protection. It slid gently out of the form, and I let it cool on the bread board for an hour before cutting off a slice.

Strawberry (nut) bread suggests that rhubarb is an alchemical cross between strawberries and celery; that foolishness aside, the strawberry chunks melt during baking, merging colorfully with the rest of the baking batter. The resulting bread was firm, moist, and quickly devoured.

—July 18 2006

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