Apple Bread!

• Cooking Spray
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups apples - peeled, cored, and chopped
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3 eggs beaten
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Prepare 2 loaf pans (8 1/2x4 1/2-inch loaf pans) with cooking spray.
2. Mix flour, baking soda, salt, walnuts, and apples in a large bowl. Whisk oil, sugar, eggs, and cinnamon together in a small bowl; add to flour mixture and mix until just moistened. Evenly divide mixture between prepared loaf pans.
3. Bake in preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 90 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

After attempting some homemade banana bread, I decided to spice things up by trying to create a chunky apple bread. As I was creating the recipe, it called for 3 cups of apples. I wasn’t sure what kind of apples so I used fuji apples. Also, I don’t know how much 3 cups of chopped apples is so I only bought 3 apples. I didn’t fully follow the recipe, like how I used yeast in the dough and made it a yeast bread. I prepped the dough as stated, but gave the dough 45 minutes to rise before reshaping. Also, we used a 12x12 pan so it was one giant loaf of bread. As we added the wet with the dry, it created a rich scent of apples. I felt that  the 3 apples was too much because there were mainly chunks in the bread. After some help with my brothers, we went quick making the bread and we were very efficient. We all were divided into different labors like, I would do all the mixing while another brother would do all the chopping, and another brother would mix the dry ingredients. The recipe actually went great and it was fun spending some bonding time with my family and making something common, bread.
Taste:
After tasting the bread, it wasn't what I expected. Throughout the bread, there were little pouches and bites of cinnamon. This just ruined the overall taste of the bread and parts of the bread had either too much cinnamon or none at all. Now lets move onto the apples. I did not enjoy the apples at all, there were chunks of apples in the bread! It was not enjoyable at all because I felt all the juices of the apples sapped out and disappeared. Then these little chunks turned into crunchy flavorless pieces. The bread was rich in flavor though, but each bite was a surprise. After some few investigations, I can conclude that the taste was from the poor mixing I did and that little thing turned the whole bread upside-down... Literally.
Texture:
The Texture of the bread was intriguing. Not letting the bread cool, we lifted it from the pan and onto the cooling rack, letting the bottom disassemble and crumble. The bottom was a soggy mess! The rest of the bread, actually felt like a refined, fresh, and crunchy bread feeling, but the bottom was this soggy mess and a chunk of the bottom fell off right before my eyes. It was a rather mushy texture, and it was not the right feeling.
Appearance:
The appearance of the bread looked great. Five minutes before the end of the baking, we dusted the top with a nice sugar top. It looked fabulous when it came out and even smelled rich. The bread rose and it reached a good consistency when we took it out. The bread looked even to be bread of quality to be sold in stores.
Aroma:
The smell of the rich apples and sweet cinnamon flowed through the room. It was like the smell of summer in the air when you opened that oven door. The flavors of the apples oozed out into the air and the cinnamon made it even nicer.
Conclusion:
To conclude, in the past week I made an Apple bread from Allrecipes.com and altered some of the recipe to what I have. The product turned out great, smelled great, but the taste of the bread told me otherwise. I enjoyed cooking this month with my bros and hope to see you on next month's blog of Culinary Adventures!