Zucchini Bread

I've been fiddling around with zucchini bread recipes and have come up with one that I like. A lot of the recipes that I found seemed to have pretty much the same proportions of flour, leavening, sugar, eggs, oil and zucchini. I just played around with the types of flour and sugar. And since I can't resist tinkering, the next time I make it I will probably change something again. Today I used part whole wheat flour instead of all white and half brown sugar instead of all white. I also used more nuts than in the typical recipes. The bread seemed a bit less moist than the all white flour and white sugar version. It also had a heartier texture, but I rather like that. My loaf pans are an inch longer than is typical so my loaves baked more quickly and aren't as high.

So here's today's version of

Zucchini Bread

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups (12 to 14 oz) coarsely grated zucchini
1 1/2 cups chopped lightly toasted walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350F. Put the flours, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and stir together thoroughly. Set aside.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl until light and foamy. Beat in the sugar, oil, and vanilla. Stir in the zucchini. Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and stir until just combined, stir in the nuts. Divide the batter evenly between 2 greased 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pans. Bake for about 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted in the middle of a loaf comes out clean. Cool on a rack 10 minutes, then turn the loaves out and finish cooling on the rack.

I like to use extra virgin olive oil instead of refined vegetable oils when baking. Refined vegetable oils are treated with some really nasty solvents to remove color, flavor and odor - yuck. I've found that the olive flavor is not at all strong and nobody has ever even noticed the difference.