Oatmeal Breakfast Bread

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was picked by Natalie of Oven Love. She selected Oatmeal Breakfast Bread for her choice and I really, really liked this! You can get the complete recipe on Natalie’s blog and you can also visit the Tuesdays with Dorie site and see links for all of the other bakers this week.

Oh man, where to start with this recipe? I made some of this month’s recipes in advance, trying to be efficient. This recipe calls for pretty standard ingredients, so I made it right away, as soon as the recipes of the month were posted. I honestly thought that this sounded a little plain. Well, I was pleasantly surprised at this recipe because it is not plain, AT ALL! It’s really, really yummy and my house smelled wonderful when it was baking. My coworkers raved about it when I took it to work. In the end, a fabulous winner.

This is a quick bread, but you substitute most of the oil with applesauce. Tasty and lower in fat! It has a pecan/brown sugar topping that gave it a nice crunch. You can add any type of dried fruit, and I opted to use dried apricots since I hadn’t baked with them in a while. I had wanted to use dried apples, but I could find them at the store (I needed to go to Trader Joe’s). Oh well, they were great with apricots. This bread is moist and the applesauce gives great flavor. The apricots are little pockets of sweetness. My expectations were blown away with this bread and I will certainly make it again. I think this recipe would make excellent muffins, and I’m sure some of the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers opted for that, so make sure you check them out. Thanks for picking such a great recipe Natalie!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 44