The first time I made zucchini bread was in grad school. Zucchini must have been on sale because it’s not something I would have bought otherwise on a $1000/month stipend plus a couple of odd part time jobs while paying rent. I was learning how to cook at that time, mostly to because I could no longer afford to eat out with a living budget of about $100/week, if I was lucky. One of the purchases I had made was the New York Times Cookbook, a brick of an anthology that promised to teach me everything I needed to know about cooking. Unfortunately, most of the ingredients listed were unaffordable and the number of steps involved was ridiculously long and complicated for a novice cook. One exception was the zucchini bread recipe.
I made a loaf and brought it to work, the research center that my PhD mentor ran. It was a big hit! Even while complaining about how the zucchini bread was going to affect her waistline and cholesterol level, she always took a couple of huge slices–some for now, some for later. For Christmas every year until I graduated, I made sure she got a loaf. One time, while taking a break from work at the center, she looked at me and said, “You know, Sonya, you probably missed your calling as a baker.”
On one hand, this is not the kind of observation you want to receive from your mentor a couple of years into a PhD program. On the other hand, she had always valued my intellect and work ethic and instrumental in leading me to an academic path. She had hired me as a TA when I was still a master’s student, entrusted me with teaching her course while she was on sabbatical, and made sure I was always financially afloat so that I could complete the work I had started. I chose to take the statement as a compliment.
I have since given away the New York Times Cookbook, discovering that it was filled with esoteric dishes that I would not try, even now, as an experienced cook. However, I decided to copy down the zucchini bread recipe for posterities.
It is a well-loved recipe, dripped on and smudged with bits of ingredients over almost twenty years. It is supposed to be baked in a loaf pan but I actually prefer to use a bundt pan. I often double the recipe and bake it in a 9×13 casserole pan. I have even tripled the recipe before and baked it in a chafing pan. There are other flourishes, such as using pecans or slivered almonds instead of walnuts, adding chocolate chips (a pro tip I got from a friend who asked for chocolate chip zucchini bread as a wedding present), streusel topping, different spice combinations, using other summer squashes in addition to or instead of the standard green one, etc. The plain, original version is the most versatile, especially if it’s made with less sugar, which I do for most baking recipes. Apparently, it’s delicious, sliced thin and toasted with a schmear of cream cheese.
Many years later, on a random street corner, I ran into my mentor and her husband. His face lit up when we were introduced and exclaimed, “You are the zucchini bread baker!” I had always thought that if I had to ever go into witness protection, change my identity, and make a living doing something completely different from my current career, I would open a coffee shop and make my own pastries and quick breads since I had the calling.
Maybe not…
What will Dr. Gwak say? 