Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Gluten-free Zucchini Bread

Some things never change. I work on a farm in the very southernmost part of Spain and there is an overload of tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini. I go to a farm in the Alpujarra mountains, close to Trevelez, the highest town in Spain, and I find the same abundance.

What to do with so much verdura?

Make preserves. This past week, I found myself discovering ways to preserve lettuce, to make cold creamy vegetable soups, and to deal with the ripe tomatoes that weren’t able to make it to the market.



And, along the way, I made two loaves of zucchini bread. According to my friend Rose, of http://healthyhipster.ca, zucchini bread must have been invented by someone who had too much zucchini and didn’t know what in the world to do with it. Who else would have thought to put this vegetable into bread?

Well, I’m glad they did.

And here is my own version. Gluten-free, of course.

Maizena (Spanish brand fine white corn flour. But really it’s just cornstarch.)
Baking soda
Salt
Grated zucchini (if you have a food processor, you’ll be very happy.)

Once the zucchini is grated, dry it on with paper towel to take out some of the liquid. This will help avoid the too-gooey center problem that happens when fruits and vegetables make their way into bread. (A trick I picked up from http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/)



Toss the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then add the zucchini, tossing it with a fork. You want the mixture to look crumbly, and have almost an equal proportion of zucchini to flour, but a little heavier on the flour side.



In another bowl mix together:

Butter
Milk
Sugar
Honey
One egg

Then add the wet ingredients to the zucchini-flour bowl and stir. Add in some cinnamon, nutmeg, or clove (or all three, depending on your pantry stock).



Into a greased baking dish and into the preheated oven. The oven I used was a bit broken, so I wasn’t able to judge the temperature. As a safety measure (and so as not to dry out the bread too much), I put a pan with water on the bottom rack, so that the bread would be moist.



This one I made for the market. But plans went awry, and we never made it to the market. So I ended up eating a good ¾ of it by myself.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting that you can use cornstarch instead of flour. I admire your willingness to bake without measuring. Don't think I could do that! BTW, you have 2 typos in here. You mention rose "of" and then don't say where she;s from, and then you mention the tip you picked up from somebody--but don't say who. Thought you'd want to know!

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