Pear bread

I adapted this recipe from a feature in this month's Fine Cooking. Now, if you wondered what the thrifty Mrs. B was doing with a subscription to Fine Cooking when she loftily claims to be on an austerity budget, let me explain that it was given to Mr. B as a birthday gift. It was a gift that went on giving, too. A lot of things in Fine Cooking are pretty fancy, but we find that if we adapt them, using cheaper ingredients, we can make lovely dinners for very little. We used to have a subscription to Bon Appetit, but that wasn't very useful to us, since it's mostly a magazine for people who have money to go on nice vacations and visit nice restaurants. The recipes weren't all that amazing, either. I can't speak highly enough of the people who make Fine Cooking, and when our subscription runs out I'll be getting it from the public library.

I don't normally make sweet things, both because we're trying to eat healthily and because we don't want Baby B getting a taste for sugar, but I made an exception because the pear tree in our garden was ready for harvesting. The pears don't taste very nice if you eat them raw, but they're wonderful in baking, and thrifty Mrs. B can't turn down free, wholesome, organic fruit. I had all the dry ingredients in my pantry anyway due to a strange stroke of luck, and the wet ingredients were all ones I had bought this week. The original recipe specified buttermilk, a thing I normally never buy, so I substituted half milk and half yogurt, which I figured was more or less the same sort of thing. It worked fine. I'm a pretty lousy baker when it comes to sweet baking (yeast bread is my thing) but this recipe, like all Fine Cooking recipes, is so good that even I couldn't mess it up.

Preheat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit, and put the oven rack in the lower third of the oven. Butter a 9x5-inch loaf pan, and line it with baking paper.

Whisk together in a large bowl:
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup pears, cored and finely diced (I didn't peel them)
1/2 cup raisins

In a smaller bowl, whisk together:
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup yogurt
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon grated orange zest (optional)

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones. Add 4 oz melted butter. Fold ingredients together gently with a spatula, being very careful not to overmix. (Overmixing is the enemy of baked goods, I have recently learned.)

Pour the batter into your loaf pan. Bake in the oven for 55 minutes, or until you can poke a toothpick into the middle of the loaf and have it come out clean. Let the loaf cool in the pan on a rack for half an hour, then remove and allow it to cool fully. Or do what we do and dig in right away.