Whole Wheat Currant Bread

As much as I love to bake with yeast (and I love it enough to have started a bread blog!), I forgot how much fun it is to bake a quick bread. This Whole Wheat Currant Bread is about as quick as a quick bread can get; it's oil-based, so no messing around with softening or melting butter. The currants don't have to be washed, peeled, cooked, or chopped, just measure and stir 'em in. An added bonus to this recipe: it's a deliciously easy way to work whole grains into your diet.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- This bread is from Nick Malgieri's The Modern Baker. I received this book for my birthday last year - in June - and only managed to bake one recipe from it. When Phyl of Of Cabbages and Kings (@gaaarp on twitter) formed a group to bake through the book, I jumped at the chance. Well, to clarify: my jump was quick but not deep! As much as I'd love to bake every single recipe in The Modern Baker, I can't swing that kind of commitment. Luckily this group is quite relaxed and flexible - there is no participation or posting requirement. Being a member of the group will give me the incentive to dip into the book from time to time, joining the others when I can and using the resources of this excellent group as an aid to my baking. Phyl has structured the baking so that the group will spend 3 months on each of the book's four sections. Different bakers will take turns "hosting" the recipes, and this bread is the one that I chose.

- Because this is "my" recipe, I've included some process pictures, for the second time in a week! And like the Swedish Visiting Cake, this recipe is so simple that the pictures are a little superfluous.

- I baked 2/3 recipe in a smallish loaf pan.

- For whole wheat flour, I used King Arthur's Irish Style Wholemeal Flour, which is a rough textured soft whole wheat flour made from red wheat.

- The group doesn't publish the recipes from The Modern Baker, but here are the steps that I followed:

Whisk eggs with sugar and brown sugar;


then whisk in milk (I used whole milk, but you could also use buttermilk)


and oil.



With a rubber (silicone in my case) spatula, fold in a mixture of whole wheat flour, baking powder and salt,


then add currants


and fold them in.


Scrape the batter into a loaf pan and bake in a 350 degree oven.

the verdict:

The bread is sweeter than I thought it'd be, which comes mostly from the currants. The flour I used gave the bread a nice rustic platform, and I could taste the brown sugar's molasses flavor. But the currants, it's really their show, and they perform admirably. My favorite way to eat this bread was toasted, hot with butter.