Recipe for "cranb-bread-1"

NAME

     CRANB-BREAD-1 - A festive cranberry orange nut-bread
     My grandmother MacKay clipped this recipe from the 1951 edi-
     tion  of  the  Pillsbury  Bake-Off  competition recipes, and
     we've made it a family tradition ever since.  From  time  to
     time  my  mother  and  I  have  both tried to improve on the
     recipe, but it appears that the recipe is  already  perfect;
     every variation we have ever tried has been disappointing by
     comparison.
     When I was a boy, before the invention of the  food  proces-
     sor,  making  this bread required cutting the cranberries in
     half by hand, with a knife, and the  person  who  brought  4
     loaves  of  cranberry  bread to the family Thanksgiving meal
     was more welcome than the person  who  brought  the  turkey.
     Now,  between  Baker's Secret loaf pans and Cuisinart slicer
     blades, you can knock out 8  perfect  loaves  of  the  stuff
     while  watching one episode of Sesame Street. My grandmother
     still cuts each cranberry in half with a paring  knife,  and
     hers still tastes better than mine.

INGREDIENTS (2 small loaves)

     200 g     all-purpose flour
     200 g     granulated sugar
     7.5 ml    baking powder
     2.5 ml    baking soda
     5 ml      salt
     180 ml    orange juice (juice of one large orange)
     15 ml     grated orange  peel  (grated  peel  of  one  large
               orange)
     30 g      shortening
     1         egg, beaten
     110 g     cranberries, halved or chopped
     115 g     walnuts or pecans, chopped.

PROCEDURE

          (1)  Preheat oven to 175 deg. C.
          (2)  Grease the bottom, but not the sides, of two small
               loaf pans.
          (3)  In  a  large  bowl,  sift  together  all  the  dry
               ingredients  (flour,  sugar, baking powder, baking
               soda, and salt). Blend very well.
          (4)  Mix together the orange juice, orange peel, melted
               shortening, and beaten egg.
          (5)  Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture.  Mix  only
               enough to blend uniformly.  Mix in the cranberries
               and the nuts; stir gently.
          (6)  Pour the mixture into the loaf pans.  Push  it  to
               the corners, leaving the center slightly hollow.
          (7)  Bake about an hour at 175 deg. C.  The loaves  are
               done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes
               out clean.
          (8)  Cool completely before  cutting.  Do  not  try  to
               serve warm.

NOTES

     It takes practice to know when to stop mixing the dough.  If
     you  mix  too  much,  the  bread gets a chewy texture to it,
     whereas it should have a very crumbly  consistency,  like  a
     muffin or cornbread.
     It really makes a difference in the texture of this bread to
     use  a  shortening  that  is solid at room temperature, like
     Crisco. It really makes a difference in the  flavor  to  use
     fresh  orange-peel  and  not  powdered.  I prefer walnuts to
     pecans.
     It might seem sensible to try to use the same orange for the
     peel and the juice, but it is really more trouble than it is
     worth to try to peel a  juiced  orange  or  juice  a  peeled
     orange.  I  usually  use two oranges, and eat the one that I
     took the peel from.
     This bread keeps well in the freezer. Specifically, it keeps
     from  Thanksgiving to Christmas. It also survives quite well
     being mailed by parcel post from Indiana to Maryland.

RATING

     Difficulty: moderate.  Time: 10 minutes preparation  if  you
     have  a  food processor, 2 hours baking and cooling.  Preci-
     sion: Measure carefully.

CONTRIBUTOR

     Brian Reid
     DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, California, USA
     reid@decwrl.DEC.COM -or- {ihnp4,ucbvax,decvax,sun,pyramid}!decwrl!reid