David Lebovitz’s Persimmon Bread
I love trying new persimmon bread recipes, and this is my latest experiment. The bread is moist and sweet with delicious flavors from spices, persimmon, and nuts.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have a whole bunch of persimmons that are ripening quite fast, so I’ve been trying out various persimmon recipes. I enjoyed the cranberry persimmon bread I tried, but I want to check out a couple more recipes.
A while back, I saw a persimmon bread recipe on David Lebovitz’s site, which he adapted from James Beard. Two big foodie names, this bread obviously had to be good. I bookmarked the recipe so long ago that I forgot about it until Adventures of an amateur foodie tried out the recipe. Her bread came out lovely, and I just had to try making it.
I made a few changes to David Lebovitz’s recipe based on ingredients I had available and the taste of my family members. One of the things this bread calls for is whiskey or cognac. As much as I wanted to add that, I knew no one in my family would eat it if I did. So that is one of the things I had to leave out.
Ingredients
- All-purpose flour
- Salt
- Baking soda
- Cinnamon
- Nutmeg
- Sugar
- Melted unsalted butter
- Large eggs
- Water
- Persimmon puree
- Chopped pecans
- Diced fuyu persimmons
How to Make It
Whisk the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar in a large mixing bowl.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the butter, eggs, water, and puree. Mix until combined, and then stir in the nuts and diced fruit.
Transfer the batter to a prepared loaf pan and bake the bread for one hour.
The bread came out moist and sweet. It had a wonderful mix of flavors, and I think the alcohol the original recipe called for would have made it even better. I enjoyed it a lot and will definitely make it again. There was only one problem. I couldn’t really taste persimmon at all.
Persimmon has a pretty mild taste that often gets lost in baked goods, but the persimmon taste was non-existent in this bread. If someone had put the bread in front of me and asked me to guess the ingredients, persimmons wouldn’t be one of my guesses. I think next time I make this bread, I will add some hard fuyu persimmons so that the bread has more of a persimmon taste.
More Recipes with Persimmons
Persimmon Bread
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cup flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup melted unsalted butter
- 2 large eggs
- 2/3 cup water
- 1 cup persimmon puree
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 1 cup diced hard fuyu persimmons
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9 x 5 loaf pan.
- In a large bowl, whisk the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. Make a well in the center of the mixture and place the butter, water, and persimmon puree in it. Using a spoon, combine the ingredients together. Fold in the nuts and diced persimmon.
- Bake the loaf for 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
I have made the James Beard amazing persimmon bread recipe. It is absolutely tasty. I would recommend using a cheap burbon whiskey, as the cognac is just too expensive to be using it in baking. Also I have increased the persimmon puree 50% to 3 cups (for the original recipe). You then can taste the persimmon more in the bread. My family doesn’t like nuts, so I opted to leave those out of the recipe. It still tastes absolutely wonderful. Without the nuts in it, you taste the persimmon flavor more.
Thanks for the info! I’ll try adding bourbon next time and increasing the puree.
Yummm! This is going on the bread list i’ve got going… looks fantastic! <3
xoXOxo
with several other persimmon bread recipes, you’re definitely the persimmon bread expert!!
Haha, I’m far from an expert. I just like trying out different recipes, especially with so many persimmons in my house. I’m going to try creating my own persimmon cake recipe soon, we’ll see how it goes.
what a delicious blog! here is so many uncanny inspirations!
have a nice time,
Paula
The recipe you have shared over here is truly delicious and it seems to be very yummy and tasty as well. I like to eat breads and all type of breads are my favourite and I like to try something new also. The recipe you have shared over here for making persimmon bread is really nice and I am going to try it soon.