Grandma's Homemade Nut Bread

When I was growing up, a swirly nutty bread would show up on the table at family gatherings.  Unfortunately, I generally ignored the bread in favor of colorful Christmas cookies and frosting-slathered brownies.

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 It wasn't until the final year or so of my grandmother making this labor-intensive bread, and I was an adult, that I gave it a second look (or taste).  And, wow, I immediately loved Grandma's Homemade Nut Bread and regretted not gorging on it every year as a child.  

About the time I really grew to love Grandma's Nut Bread, the annual making of the rolls became too difficult for her.  Grandma lived until age 91 and probably made it until she was in her mid-80s. Grandma passed away in 2016 the day after Christmas.. My mother made the bread once years ago and it hasn't reappeared since, it is a very labor-intensive bread. Our friend, Jay, did make a batch of it a couple of Christmases ago for us and that was a real treat.

A little background, my hometown of Middletown was once a patchwork of ethnic enclaves:  Catholic Irish around the mid-town area, Italians on the south side, Eastern Europeans staked out some turf in between, and so on. The recent immigrants brought their own culinary traditions with them.  In many cases the recipes have long outlasted the ethnic enclaves as the lines began to blur in Middletown and the the city morphed into one relatively homogeneous melting pot.  This nut bread recipe came from an Italian woman who was a friend of my grandma, who is also of Italian descent.  The recipe came into our family in 1966 and my great-grandmother and grandmother made it every Christmas for almost 40 years

Food traditions bind us like few others to past generations.  Mom swears she could hear her grandmother talking to her as she kneaded the dough.

🔩 The Nuts & Bolts of Nut Bread

Okay, a few thoughts on this recipe:

• You can substitute pecans for walnuts if you like, but I wouldn't. I mean, my Grandma wouldn't, so why would I? But you can.

• Works best on cookie sheets. I've not tried in a loaf pan, but you can try it that way if you want.

• Some people compare this to a banana nut bread recipe or banana bread, but there are no bananas in this recipe! A fun experiment would be to add a couple cups of mashed bananas and see what happens. If I were adding bananas I'd add a splash of orange juice too.

My grandmother never used an electric mixer with this recipe, but you could try it with the dough and the batter, that might speed up the process a bit.

Give Grandma's Homemade Nut Bread is one of those delicious recipes that you can give a try if you are adventuresome and feel free to cut it in half unless you want 11-15 loaves of nut bread!  Meanwhile, are there any culinary traditions in your family that it just wouldn't be Christmas unless they were on your menu?

By the way, if you have extra, just pop the loaves in a freezer bag and they'll store well for months. Freezing won't freeze away the calories, though, Although there is some nice protein and fiber in this bread. Grandma's nut bread is great warm, too, you can slice off some and stick in the toaster oven. Spread with cream cheese and enjoy!

🥜Grandma's Nut Bread

• 12 cups all purpose flour
• 1 quart milk
• 6 eggs (2 whole eggs and four yolks)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 /2 pound butter
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 3 packets of fast-rising powdered yeast; or 3 cakes of yeast
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Nut Bread Filling

• 6 pounds of English walnuts
• 1 pound graham crackers
• vegetable oil or melted shortening
• About 3 cups milk
• 3 1 /2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 egg whites

Instructions for the bread:

1. Place flour in a large mixing bowl, add salt.
2. Dissolve sugar in 1 cup warm milk, mix into flour and mix well.
3.  Melt butter into a little milk and mix with flour mixture and blend thoroughly.
4. Add powdered yeast to mixture (OR dissolve cake yeast in a little warm milk and add to mixture -DO NOT DO BOTH!).
5. Add yeast and slightly beaten eggs and remaining milk and vanilla.  
6. Knead well for about 15 minutes!
7. Sprinkle flour around dough and place in a pan to raise until double in bulk.
8. Divide into eight balls.

Instructions for the filling:

1. Grind nuts and graham crackers, until about the consistency of sand.  
2. Add about 2 cups of warm milk, add sugar, beat egg-whites until stiff  
3. Add to nut mixture and stir well. Add vanilla extract.
4.  Add remaining milk and mix well.
5. Roll out dough and brush oil lightly on rolled dough.
6. Spread with nut mixture.  
7. Roll like a jelly roll.  
8. Bake on cookie sheets in a moderate oven (300-350 depending on the oven) until the outside of the loaves are golden brown.

🥜Other Amish Nut Recipes

Amish cooks find nuts to be a very versatile, fla vorful addition to recipes and they show up a lot during the holidays!

Amish Nut Cake

Delicious cake!

Amish Nut Brownies

Delicious browneis!

Fudge Nut Bars

Fudgy, and nutty, what could be better?

Amish Toffee Nut Bars

Amazing!