This Quick 'Peanut Butter Bread' Recipe From The ‘30s Is Going Viral And You Must Try It

It’s no secret people have been baking up a storm to cope with the stress and occupy their time in these days of COVID-19.

If you are like me, you have multiple kids at home who are eating you out of house and home because not being in school or daycare makes them run to the pantry every hour. I’m having trouble keeping up, and I simply cannot just run to the store because they have a craving or we are out of milk. So, they need to be a little more mindful if they are grabbing something simply out of boredom.

I’ve always made bread for my kiddos — pumpkin, banana, zucchini, chocolate chip with coconut, rosemary sea salt, pretzel cheese bread, I could go on. There’s nothing like baking a loaf and cutting a slice as soon as I take it out of the oven. We’ve had afternoons where I’ve made a loaf and it was gone in a half hour.

The best part for me is how comforting it is to have the house smell nice and have my kids hop up on the counter to help me — something they still do as teenagers.

So, when my daughter was craving homemade bread the other day, I put yeast on my grocery list. When I came home empty-handed, she was sad and I was even sadder. I miss the days when you didn’t have to wait in line to get into the grocery store while it’s pouring rain.

I thought for sure there must be a way we could make some bread without using yeast, and so I consulted the Googles. The first thing to pop up was a quick bread that didn’t use yeast and only had a few ingredients I already had on hand. I was unbelievably excited to try it as I’d never seen this recipe, but even more intrigued when I read about the history of this loaf.

It’s a recipe from the Great Depression called Peanut Butter Bread, and was in a cookbook published in 1932.

Since the pandemic, it’s become super popular — people are baking it up and putting their own spin on it. And after making it, I see what all the fuss is about.

First, you don’t have to be a great, or even experienced baker to pull this off. It’s so incredibly easy. You combine the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients and bake for an hour. It comes out looking like a loaf of bread you’d find at your favorite bakery.

I have to mention how fantastic my house smelled while I was making this. Since there’s sugar and peanut butter in the recipe, it tricked me into thinking I had a batch of peanut butter cookies in the oven.

Regardless of the smell, the finished product isn’t dessert-like; it’s slightly sweet, but not too sweet. As soon as it came out of the oven, we tried a piece slathered with butter, and it reminded me of a hearty cornbread with a denser texture.

You can easily modify this quick bread recipe by adding raisins, chocolate chips, or apples — the list is endless. Some bakers are using crunchy peanut butter for more texture, while others prefer smooth.

If you aren’t a huge fan of peanut butter, don’t worry. My kids couldn’t even really taste the peanut butter in it. It’s very subtle and not overpowering at all.

This bread would make amazing french toast, is a great side to any dinner, and I see Nutella spread on this in my son’s future. I toasted a piece and added raspberry jam for breakfast, and my daughter had the great idea to try fluff on hers.

I made another loaf last night because we blew through the first one so quickly. This time I substituted equal parts ground oats for the flour, and it came out just as good.

You can view the full recipe here if you’d like to give it a try. I hope you do. You literally cannot mess this up, so if you’ve always wanted to be a bread-baker, now is your chance. I promise you won’t be sorry, and will feel incredibly proud of yourself.

I know I did.