Homegrown Gourmet Quick Bread Round Up

The Homegrown Gourmet for this month featured Quick Breads, a bread or cake which uses chemical leavening, such as baking powder or baking soda, instead of yeast. We had a variety of entries:

Bev from Yummy in my Tummy is located in Belgium and baked up a lovely loaf of Beer Bread to show off a local Belgian beer: MAES.





Jack from Redacted Recipes shares his finds at a local New York farmer's market in a wonderful Cheese, Onion & Potato Bread.



Ivy from Kopiaste, to Greek Hospitality used Kalamata Olives to flavor bread. She made loaves of Eliopsomo that were eaten up by her family!




Judy at Judy's Gross Eats shows off the abundance of citrus in California by making Lemon Lime Scones.





Susan from Food Blogga from San Diego shares a delicious variation on one of the most well-known quick breads. She combined spotted bananas with other flavors to make Banana Coconut Almond Bread.


Megan from Megans Cookin can't think of anything but the strawberry patches in Redding, so she incorporated strawberries into Strawberry Bread with Strawberry Butter.



Judy from No Fear Entertaining shares an entertaining tale of making Carambola/Starfruit Quick Bread to "star" Florida's fruit!





Michelle from Culinography baked up an Ode to Carolina Sweet Potato Praline Bread to showcase some of the classic North Carolina flavors. Yum!








Sunita from Sunita's World baked up Savory Scones using a variety of vegetables found in Britain. Even her toughest critics were pleased with these!







My friend Karen from Do Better baked up a delightful Orange Chocolate Scones using Bay Area oranges that were delivered by a neighbor.


Manuela from Baking History bakes up the "official muffin" of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - Cornmeal Muffins.




Homegrown Gourmet's creator, Erika from Bean's Bistro, shares a Maple Blueberry Bread which pairs handpicked blueberries with New England maple syrup. Sounds like maple syrup covered blueberry pancakes baked into a bread...delicious!

Archana from Archana's Kitchen shares Puffed Indian Bread which she says is the daily bread for many in India.





From Pennsylvania comes Laurie from Quirky Cupcake who tried several times to make shoe fly cupcakes, a take on shoe fly pie. She settled on Slushed-Up Cornbread Muffins. Unfortunately, she may never eat cornbread again!



From here in Peru, I shared a Lime Poppyseed Quick Bread made from limes that were actually home grown in the jungle of Peru. I love limes and making a quick bread from them turned out to be delicious!

Thanks to all of you who shared something from your region with the rest of us! And now for the winner...

If I were to walk into a brunch of sorts and see a tabletop full of all these wonderful selections, I wondered which one I would choose first. Several of them stand out to me as winners, but I must say, this is what my plate would look like:


Congratulations Michelle, your Ode to Carolina Sweet Potato Praline Bread has won me over! I look forward to making this bread soon and look forward to your choice for Homegrown Gourmet #6!

(Updated 17Feb08) Michelle has chosen breakfast as her Homegrown Gourmet theme! All the information can be found on her blog!