Pinterest Experiment I: Almond Bread

Almond bread? It sounds a little weird, maybe, but it was a recipe I found on Pinterest today, and I decided to try it.

{For those others of you on Pinterest, I tend to be one of those pinners who pin things, but don't try them. I have decided to try to fix that, and this is the first experiment of however-many-i-do.}

The link to the original recipe is here.

{For those of you who may be gluten-free, this recipe would be a super easy one to amend by exchanging the wheat flour with almond and coconut flours. Really, I'm sure you could use whatever gluten-free flour mix you wanted, these flours are just preferred as far as I'm concerned because I have reactions to white rice}

But, before we go any further, allow me to say that I edited the recipe quite a bit, so this is not one of those "Pinstrosity" kind of posts, you know, those wonderful cooks who test the recipes, and post about how bad a recipe it was so the world will avoid it at all costs. I was just trying it, and thought I would blog it while I was at it.

The changes made were, most notably, no poppy seeds. I love poppy seeds, but they don't usually live in my cabinets, so I couldn't bring them to the party. Or, more simply, I didn't have any, so I didn't use any. Also, we had hardly any oil, so I only used 3/4 cup oil instead of 1 1/8 cups, and it was half olive oil, and half coconut oil, instead of vegetable cooking oil. I didn't foresee this being a problem, because there's so much milk in it, and I used whole milk, so there was more fat from there, and instead of fake butter flavoring, I used real butter, which is healthier, anyway.  I wish I could have reduced the sugar, because it needs 2 1/4 cups, which seems like way to much for two loaves, but I did not mess with that because I felt like I had pushed my luck already. I also didn't drizzle it, mainly because I don't have orange juice, so as far as the orange glaze goes, "I know nussingk!" :-)

Well, it was very moist, but both loaves seemed a little dense, and while I absolutely love almond flavoring, having it in something so bready was a little weird. The flavor was fine, it just took some getting used to the taste with that texture. I was going to eat it the way I do lemon poppy seed bread, plain with no butter, but the somewhat "sharp" taste of the almond extract needed the softening of some butter. I think the glaze is what would make this dessert bread phenomenal. I'm not going to toss the recipe, pulling it down from my virtual corkboard, but if I try again, serving it with some ice cream or some other complimentary dessert item would be better. As a final note, it may just be my circa 1950 electric oven, but I had to bake these loaves for about 80 minutes, which is 20-30 minutes longer than the recipe calls for. Do what you like with that info, but there it is. :-)

My PollyPinRating is 4 out of 5. My edits to the recipe may have done it no favors, but it was just a tad dense, and without some other flavors balancing the almond, the taste buds get a little weary of the flavor. The amount of unhealthy ingredients in the recipe also goes into this number; namely white sugar and cooking oil.

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