Facebook | Pinterest | Instagram I said, “I’m sorry, did you just change from a pink button up shirt…into another pink button up shirt?” Long silence. I’m laughing. He looks up. “I HEARD YOU. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt. A white shirt with purple stripes on it. [They are not. They are pink]. He continued defiantly, “THIS one has short sleeves. THIS one is linen. Perfect for SUMMER because it’s HOT outside.” “Are you STEAMING YOUR SHIRT?” “Of course. It’s new, and it’s got all those new-shirt-wrinkles in it.” This, for our Friday afternoon at home, where we will see no one but each other and various neighborhood children. “You’re not writing about this are you? Why are you still laughing? I won’t approve this one!” Well friends, guess what, he did. And now you know that you can show up at my house anytime day or night and Eric is going to be PRESSED AND READY. He even wears a collared shirt to bed. Not really, I’m kidding, but it is true that he wore a collared shirt with a classy sweater over the top when I went in to the hospital to have our son, and the nurses nicknamed him “Dapper Dad.” Oh Eric, how I love you! Have you planted any zucchini? Do you have a ton?? I am what you might call “gardening challenged” so I usually don’t bother. Even zucchini, globally known as the easiest vegetable to grow, has proven too difficult for us. Thank you, farmers of America, for being good at your jobs so that I can make this zucchini bread! A mix of granulated sugar and brown sugar. Many classic zucchini bread recipes call for only white sugar. I found that I like to use a mix of both white and brown to bring in that carmel-y flavor, and of course the extra moistness that brown sugar brings! This does make the bread a bit darker, but I didn’t hear any complaints from my testers. What spices should we add for flavor? Cinnamon is standard. I tested several spice mixes and landed on a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. I’m a cardamom lover and add it to almost any recipe that has cinnamon (like this Apple Pie), but you can totally skip it if you want. Don’t leave out the nutmeg though! It really rounds out the flavor of this zucchini bread. Moisten the bread with a combination of oil and butter. Two of my biggest issues with quick bread are dryness and lack of flavor. Many recipes call for just oil or just butter. Oil makes cakes and bread supremely moist (it it 100% fat; butter is about 80% fat). But butter brings that rich flavor we all love. Solution? Use both! Ultimate moist texture and delicious buttery flavor. We’re also adding in a little sour cream for moisture! Mix ins. Do you add chocolate chips to your zucchini bread? Nuts? I love it both ways (but not combined.) The photos today show one batch with chocolate chips and one batch with walnuts. If you add chocolate chips, your bread is going to feel more like a slice of cake (no complaints here). If you add nuts, it’s going to taste more like a traditional quick bread. The squeeze. Texture is everything for me when it comes to zucchini bread. The secret to getting the right texture is squeezing some of the water out of the shredded zucchini before adding it to your bread. Squeezing is kind of annoying, I know. Blotting with a paper towel achieves almost the same effect and is easier. More on that below.
Do you peel zucchini for bread?
No, there’s really no need. The peel on zucchini is thin and soft, so it incorporates easily into zucchini bread without messing with the texture.
How do you grate zucchini for bread without a grater?
No grater? No problem! There are plenty of other ways you can create perfect zucchini shreds for this zucchini bread recipe:
Food processor: If you have a food processor with a grater attachment, you can easily feed the zucchini through that to create shreds. Vegetable peeler: This one is a little more labor intensive, but will work great if that’s what you have. After peeling, use a knife to chop into shred-size pieces. Spiralizer: A spiralizer won’t create small shreds, but you can use it in a pinch to create longer spirals, then use a knife to chop it up into smaller pieces.
How to know when your bread is done
There is nothing sadder than slicing into your loaf of bread to find that it’s raw in the middle. Usually zucchini bread takes about an hour to bake, but sometimes it takes even longer. Zucchini bread is kind of tricky because there are so many variables, like the type of pan you’re using, the temperature of your oven, the level of moisture in your bread. My favorite method for testing doneness is a regular old toothpick. Poke it deep into the center of your bread. If it comes out with any wet batter, add another 4-5 minutes to your bake time. You might have to repeat this process several times! (Especially since every time you open your oven to check, you’re lowering the temperature.) Don’t take your bread out until there is no batter on the toothpick. If the top of your bread is over browning, cover it with foil. The only thing you need to worry about is if you added chocolate chips to your bread. Poke it in a few places to make sure it’s just chocolate on the toothpick, not wet batter. Zucchini bread is quite moist because of all the liquid from the zucchini, so I always err on the side of over baking slightly rather than risking a raw center (I will happily eat over baked bread. I will throw raw bread directly in the trash.) Pro tip: I tried baking this using the convection setting on my oven and I found that it had absolutely no effect. Usually convection helps bake things faster, but zucchini bread is so dense that even if that oven air is being fanned around, it’s going to take just as long. Don’t forget to sprinkle the top of your bread with a little somethin somethin. For the chocolate chip bread, I sprinkled on mini chips. For the walnut bread, I sprinkled on raw sugar. Pro tip: don’t chop off the little knobby end. Use it as a handle! Then you don’t accidentally grate your fingers. (Been there!) Or you can use the grating tool on a food processor. Either way works great! You are going to want 12 ounces of zucchini for this recipe. That’s about 2 cups. Make sure you pack the zucchini into the measuring cup if you are not weighing it. If you have huge zucchini with seeds in it, scrape out and discard the seeds before grating. I tested it both ways, all things being equal except I squeezed one and didn’t squeeze the other. Both resultant breads were delicious, but the one that hadn’t been squeezed had my least favorite quick bread quality: gumminess. All that moisture from the zucchini gets baked into the bread. The edges don’t get as crispy, and it has a heavier weight. The squozen bread, on the other hand, is light and airy. It is fluffy, and, well, bread-like, with perfectly crispy edges. The ultimate goal for a quick bread, right? The bread was not dry at all. I definitely recommend blotting or squeezing liquid out of your zucchini before adding it to your bread! (Last year I did a bunch of testing with banana bread. I found that the main thing that defines good banana bread vs. bad banana bread is a gummy texture. The trick is to not add too much banana. You can read all about it on my Banana Bread post. For zucchini, the amount that you add is not as important as making sure you blot or squeeze out some of the liquid.) Here’s how I like to blot shredded zucchini. Layer it between two paper towels and press until both towels are wet. Blotting and squeezing are both effective ways of removing excess moisture from zucchini! Toss your zucchini into your flour mixture and stir it up. The flour will absorb some of the liquid. This is a must for improved texture! I always toss with the flour whether or not I squeeze/blot. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Do not over mix your batter. This will make the finished bread tough instead of soft and tender.
Add chocolate chips (or a high quality bar of chocolate, chopped). Sprinkle the top with raw sugar, granulated sugar, or, if you’re really livin’ it up, cinnamon sugar (no, you don’t need to buy a shaker of cinnamon sugar, just mix some cinnamon with your sugar). Add nuts. Chopped walnuts or pecans are a sure bet (toast them first if you know what’s good for you).
Once the bread is completely cool (okay well, maybe not ALLL the way cool), use a sharp serrated knife and use a sawing motion to slice the bread. Why? Because it’s bread. And butter goes on bread. I feel a little silly adding this here, but one of my food blogger friends (hi Dorothy) posted on Instagram recently about buttering zucchini bread, and someone commented that they had never thought to try it with butter. This blew my mind, because of COURSE you butter zucchini bread, and I just want to make sure that if there is even a tiny tiny percentage of you out there who don’t know about slathering massive thick slices of zucchini bread with copious soft, melty butter… Take the pan out of the oven and immediately set on a cooling rack so the bottom of the bread can start cooling. After 15-30 minutes, remove from the pan. If you have lined the pan with parchment paper or foil, you can lift the bread out of the pan easily. If not, gently flip the bread over into your hand (or on a plate), remove the pan, and set the bread on a cooling rack. If you are in a hurry you can try heating it up in the microwave at a lower power level, or using the defrost button. Once thaw, we love to toast individual slices of zucchini bread to get them nice and toasty on the edges. And then of course…
