pear blue cheese fig jam bread

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Today we signed a lease with another apartment much farther away from the city. We will be moving from here at the end of this month. It feels good to finally be done with the new apartment search, but I’m a little sad that my building will be demolished.

Plus, for more than 20 years, I’ve always lived either within the city center, or within a couple of miles, and this new place is several miles away. It will take me more than one hour to commute to work by bus. I’m really dreading that part, but at least my wonderful workplace will allow me to adjust my schedule so that I can start my work day an hour later to avoid being on a crowded bus during peak commute hours.

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I also wanted to mention something I learned about poinsettia. Feel free to skip this part if you are a poinsettia expert. If you want Poinsettia to bloom their lovely holiday flowers by Christmas time, but you do not live in California, or some other southern state, there’s this complicated method where you have to give it exactly 8 hours of sunlight, followed by total and absolute darkness, every day for several weeks before Christmas. Either you need to get a large cardboard box without any holes, or you need to place it in a closet without any light coming through either the keyhole or the bottom of the door. That’s if you want to induce flowers by Christmas. Otherwise, if you just let it grow and leave it alone, if you live in a northern town like Seattle, it will probably bloom around the end of January.

Anyways, enough about old brick buildings and flowers, let’s talk about a certain quick bread!!

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This was an easy recipe to prepare. I had all the ingredients in my fridge. It is a wonderful combination of flavors–pears, fig, and blue cheese. I wish I had some walnuts. to add crunch.

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This was inspired by a recipe I found online HERE. (Of course, my version looks nothing like the original.) I substituted yogurt for the buttermilk, and fig jam for the honey. It reminded me of scones. In fact, you can probably easily make them into scones, using very cold butter instead of the oil. All in all, I think these were good substitutions, but I’m curious to try the other variations presented in the link.

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Pear Blue Cheese Fig Jam Bread

ingredients

1 and 1/3 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour (If you don’t have it, just use all purpose)

1/4 cup wheat germ (optional)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 ripe medium pears

2 eggs

1/3 cup oil

1/4 cup yogurt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup fig jam

1/2 cup blue cheese, crumbled into pieces

method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Sift the first six ingredients into a large bowl and whisk. Make a well and set aside. Core the pears and cut into cubes. I didn’t peel mine, but if the pears are not ripe or have thick peels, you may want to peel it before cubing. Set aside. Crack the two eggs in the center of the well of the flour mixture in the bowl and add the oil, the yogurt, the vanilla, the the crumbled pieces of blue cheese. Stir briefly and briskly, making sure to at least break the yolks of the eggs and stir it enough to let it moisten the flour. Add the pears and half the fig jam and stir briefly again. Place in a greased 9 by 5 inch loaf pan. For the remaining fig jam, add in dollops on top, then press down each dollop so it is somewhere in the middle of the loaf, not the surface. Bake for about 45-55 minutes, or until toothpick test comes out clean in the center. Mine took about 48 minutes. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes and carefully unmold and let cool right side up on a wire cooling rack. Wrap in plastic when cooled and refrigerate overnight before slicing with a serrated knife to serve. Enjoy!!

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11 responses to “pear blue cheese fig jam bread”

    • Hi Suzanne! Yes. I’ve been scaling back. I will still be posting, just not every week. Maybe when we get settled into the new place next month, I could post more. Thanks for stopping by!!!

      Liked by 1 person

  1. I love pear and bleu cheese together – the fig just has to take this right over the top. This bread looks outstanding!

    Like

    • Hi Amber!
      I’m glad you commented, because I forgot to write that in for the recipe section, didn’t I? I think I may have used 2 teaspoons. Sorry about that. But thanks, because I’m going to amend the ingredient list to show that! Hope it turned out.

      Like

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