My husband has a sweet tooth. Rather than fill him up with candy, I usually bake healthier quick breads for him to snack on while he’s at work. I don’t usually post the recipes or pictures for these breads, as I don’t really consider most quick breads worthy of an article. Can you imagine writing down all the possible toppings for a pizza? It’s analogous, in my mind. There are so many variations on quick bread. Practically everybody and everybody’s grandmother’s second cousin removed has a recipe for pumpkin bread or banana bread. Everybody swears by their own rendition. Honestly! Making bad quick bread is a challenge, and compared to yeast breads, they’re nothing. So why the fuss?

Despite that argument, recent disappointments have forced me to reconsider my position on not posting quick bread recipes. I speak, of course, of the damned lemon-poppy seed bread and (likewise) other citrus breads.

I attempted three separate loaves of lemon-poppy seed bread. Each of them was good: sweet, moist, but not packed. Delicious, but lacking. Why? Perhaps, dear reader, you like others prefer a lemon-poppy seed bread to taste like that boxed yellow cake you buy from the grocery store. But when I bake a lemon-poppy seed bread, I want to taste lemons. I want sweet and tart. I do not want a bread of sweetened flour with the anecdotal sprinkling of poppy seeds. Yet that’s exactly what happened. Three times. Lemon juice and lemon zest failed. Lemon extract failed. A potent combination of all three failed. None of them had the desired effect. I was in my own crappy episode of "The Empire of Quick Bread Strikes Back." How galling.

I had a chance to revisit the subject of citrus bread in the form of today’s post, Cranberry-Orange Bread. I was in the mood for revenge, so I decided to pull out my latest ideas: orange syrup and sour yogurt. I honestly have no idea if orange juice would have accomplished the feat alone, as I was unwilling to yield any quarter in this round. However, my efforts were well rewarded.

Ingredients for Orange Syrup
½ gallon orange juice
2 heaping spoons of honey
1 stick of butter

Ingredients for Quick Bread
¾ cup orange syrup
1 ¾ cups Splenda
½ orange, zested
7 ounces 2% Greek yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 ¼ cups white whole wheat bread flour
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole walnuts
½ tsp salt
2 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsps baking soda
1 bag (about 1 ⅓ cup) dried sweetened cranberries

1. Reduce the orange juice until there is a little more than half the original volume, then mix in the honey and butter. Continue reducing the mixture until there is slightly less than half the original volume or about 30 fluid ounces. Use 6 fluid ounces in the quick bread recipe.
2. Combine the first eight (wet) ingredients.
3. Optional: Grind the walnuts into flour.*
4. In a separate bowl, combine the bread flour, the all purpose flour, the walnut flour, the salt, and the leavening ingredients.
5. Mix together wet and dry ingredients. Fold in cranberries. Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes. Do the toothpick test: run a toothpick through the bulky center and extract. If the toothpick is clean, then pull the bread out of the oven. Otherwise continue to bake until the bread passes the toothpick test.

* Tyler doesn’t like nuts in his quick bread, so I sneak them in with nut flour. Nuts balance the nutritional content of the quick bread, providing protein and fat where ordinary grain flour and sugar only provide carbohydrates; nuts are also very filling. To achieve a walnut flour, pulse the nuts in small batches and periodically rest the nuts between pulses. Fail to follow these instructions and the nuts will turn to butter because of the heat imparted to them during grinding. If you prefer chunks of nuts in your bread, simply omit the walnut flour from the dry mix and add whole nuts to the dough when you add the cranberries.

This recipe is by no means the perfect quick bread, but you can definitely taste the actual orange. Also, the bread itself is tender and moist without being too dense. Insert sigh of relief. Here are a few suggestions for future improvement:

1. There's extra leavening power in this recipe—more than necessary for what's there, I think. (I was being conservative.) Next time add a few more extras: more cranberries, maybe a little apricot or even candied citrus peel.
2. To add fiber, replace ½ cup of the grain flour with oat bran. NB: I would suggest removing ¼ cup of all purpose and ¼ cup of the whole wheat bread flour.
3. For an extra, extra kick of citrus, try replacing the milk and vegetable oil with a ½ cup of orange syrup.
4. Spice up the bread a little with a ½ tsp of cinnamon. Choose whatever cinnamon suits. Usually strong Vietnamese Cassia is preferred for baked goods. However, the more complex ceylon might play well with the orange in this recipe. Interesting.

Update 11/19/2009: new re-formulated batch came out of the oven yesterday; I added 102 grams (⅔ cup) chopped apricot, ½ cup oat bran (minus the same amount of flour), and ½ tsp of ceylon cinnamon. I hardly noticed the oat bran and cinnamon. But the apricot! The apricot was delicious. Unfortunately, the apricot or the oat bran may have masked the presence of the walnut, because I could no longer pick up the subtle nuttiness of the bread. :( More experimentation is required. If you desire cinnamon in the bread, however, I would stick with Vietnamese Cassia; strength of flavor is required to survive the fruity bad boys.