Weekend Cooking: Lemon-Ginger Yogurt Bread

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Earlier this week I was given three quarts of organic lemon yogurt that was two days past its sell-by date. I needed to figure out quickly what to do with all that yogurt before it started to go bad.

I froze one quart in ice cube trays to use in smoothies (thanks to @wisekaren for the tip), and we're eating our way through another quart. I still, however, had a lot of yogurt left.

By the way, do you know how difficult it is to search for "lemon yogurt" as an individual ingredient? Well, believe me, it is. Anyway, I had a craving for quick bread, and eventually found a recipe I could use as a starting point. Without a lot of a trouble, I came up with an adaptation of Food52's adaptation of Mark Bittman's yogurt bread. (Did you follow that?)

The main change I made was to cut down on the sweetener because the lemon yogurt has sugars in it. I also discovered that what I thought was a 1/2 cup of molasses in the cupboard was really more like 1/3 of cup. I supplemented that with the last 2 tablespoons of honey left in the house. The recipe said to use a loaf pan, but failed to note whether that should be an 8-inch or 9-inch pan. Because of the 3 cups of dry ingredients, I opted for the larger loaf pan, thinking I'd rather have a flatter bread than one that spilled over the top. I was going to add craisins to the batter but at the last minute decided on ginger chips (sugared dried ginger).

The result was moist with just a hint of lemon and a nice bite of ginger. I'd gladly make this again for company.

Go to my pin or to Food52 for the original recipe. Here is my version.

Lemon-Ginger Yogurt Bread
Adapted from Food52, which was adapted from Mark Bittman
1 9-inch loaf

• 2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup coarse-grind cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 2/3 cup whole milk lemon yogurt
• 1/3 cup molasses 
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1/2 cup ginger chips

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a 9-inch loaf pan.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking soda to mix. In a large measuring cup, whisk the yogurt, molasses, and honey until combined. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix gently until the flour is almost incorporated. Add the ginger and mix just until all the flour has been moistened.

Spread the batter into the prepared pan, leveling off the top. Place in the center of the oven and bake about 50 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.

Let cool in the pan on a wire rack before cutting.