A quick bread with benefits: sweet potato bread

The Guyman and I LOVE the whole family of quickbreads: banana bread, applesauce cake, lemon cake, poppyseed, etc. When I say "quickbreads" I mean those goodies that bake up in loaf pans, but do not use yeast. Their leavenings are baking powder, or baking soda, or both. And... as the careful reader knows, these are the ones which use - what size pan? 9x5, rather than 8x4. We use those smaller ones for yeast breads.

The title "quickbread" comes, of course, from the fact that they do not need that rising time that you have with yeast breads. Do know, however, that they bake for a lot longer than a yeast bread. A good one will appeal to everyone, and in this one, from Penzey's , you get a bunch of benefits, from the sweet potatoes.

Let's have a show of hands: how many of you eat sweet potatoes other than a casserole at Thanksgiving? Well, you gotta change that. Seriously, you do. About a year ago, a study came out talking about the nutritional benefits of sweet potatoes. And there are many. A cup of mashed sweet potatoes has - ready for this - 770% of your daily vitamin A requirement.

You read that right. Annalena did not put an extra digit in there. They are also more filling than plain potatoes, have a ton of Vitamin A and Vitamin B6, and, I'm told, the sugars in them are the so-called "good sugars." Don't muck em up with too much butter or other stuff, and you've got a lovely, good for you vegetable that is very easy to cook.

And now, of course, we're going to muck them up, with a wonderful quickbread. It's going to take some time to make, however, but it's worth it. If one serving of a piece of this will give you 75% of the vitamin A you need for the day, you can maybe squint and call it good for you. Let's put it this way, it's better than most things.

Let's start by baking some sweet potatoes. Easiest thing in the world: crank up your oven to 400, put the sweet potatoes in, whole, and let them bake away. They're done when a fork goes in easily. Bake some when you're cooking something else, let them cool, peel them, and mash em with a fork, a masher, anything you have. You'll get a good yield: I baked three big ones, and got four cups of puree

Which is more than enough for four of these loaves. We're going to make two, and you're going to use the rest during the week for dinner, right?

Here's where things get REAL easy. Preheat your oven to 350 and then get two of those 9x5 pans, and grease them. You don't really need to add flour. Put them aside, while you mix 4 cups of flour, and 3 cups of sugar. You could probably substitute about a third of the flour with whole wheat flour, especially if you luck on some whole wheat pastry flour. It might not rise as high, but it will still be good. Add a tablspoon of cinnamon (that is on the conservative side. Add more if you like), and add an equal amount of fresh grated nutmeg. If you dump the cinnamon right on the flour, and then grate the nutmeg next to it, you'll be able to guestimate with a fair amount of acuracy. Add a teaspoon each of baking soda and baking powder. Stir this all together.

In a separate bowl, mix up 4 eggs, two cups of mashed sweet potato, a cup of vegetable oil, and about 2/3 cup water. Just stir this all together, and then stir it into the flour mixture. Don't overbeat the mass, but please make sure you've mixed everything. Look for those tell tale streaks of white flour. You'll see some. When you don't anymore, you're ok.

Now, you can either divide this equally between the two pans you prepared, or you can do what I did, and add some "goodies." To do that, pour about 1/4 of your batter into each of the pans. Put some yummies on top of that. I put candied ginger on one, and candied walnuts on the other. You could use chocolate chips, or white chocolate chips, or raisins, or just plain nuts, anything you like. You'll have half your batter left, and divide that between the two pans. Use a spatula to even things out, and finally, the step you should NOT leave out.

Sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar over each loaf. This is going to give you some really wonderful crunchiness when the loaf is baked. If you have a "crunch" sugar like turbinado or pearl sugar, even better.

Bake these guys for an hour. That's about twice as long as you'd bake a loaf of yeast bread, and it's because there's so much moisture.

When they're done (you can test by inserting a straw in the center and pulling it out, to see how much adheres. If almost nothing does, you're done), let the pans rest for ten minutes. Run the dull side of a knife around the perimeter of the pans, and shake the loaves out onto a cooling rack. Leave them alone for at least a few hours, preferably overnight. Quickbreads do better with a rest of at least a few hours.

Each of these loaves is supposed to serve 12. If you make 12 servings, you'll get 70% of your vitamin A requirement in each serving.

Why not? Go ahead and make something like this. Yes, it's not a low fat treat and yes, it isn't the best thing you can eat, but wouldn't you rather get SOME vitamins for the 250 calories a slice will cost you than nothing?