Zucchini Bread

Chef Ashley Christensen bakes summer’s most prolific cucurbit into a sweet and satisfying quick bread.

- Paige Grandjean

Shredded zucchini is patted dry, not squeezed, to add extra moisture to this tender loaf

GROWING UP IN KERNERSVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA, chef Ashley Christensen’s summers were filled with zucchini. With two huge organic vegetable gardens right outside her back door, Christensen remembers prolific harvests. “My mom was always looking for ways to use the overgrown guys,” she recalls. Zucchini bread became a go-to snack for their busy family and an easy gift for her mom to give often to friends, neighbors, and clients. “As kids, it didn’t take my brother and me long to hit savory-squash fatigue,” Christensen says. “So the indulgence of the sweet zucchini bread was always a nice reset.”

Christensen first shared her mom’s zucchini bread recipe with Food & Wine in 2004 in a story about the now-shuttered Enoteca Vin wine bar in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she was executive chef at the time. The tender loaf, flecked with strands of shredded squash and a smidge of cinnamon, has changed very little over the past 21 years—today’s version (recipe p. 110) includes a dusting of sugar on top rather than in the pan. “Its evolution as a recipe has mostly been in what we might add to it or serve with it,” she says. “I love it baked with pecans [folded into the batter], and it’s delicious toasted and then finished with salted butter or cream cheese. If you want to get really indulgent, let it dry out on the counter a little bit—intentionally or accidentally—and then turn it into zucchini ‘French toast.’” That’s how Christensen served it back in the 2004 story: Thick zucchini bread slices were soaked in an egg-and-heavy-cream mixture flavored with vanilla, pan-fried until golden, and topped with a buttered-bourbon maple syrup.