Whole Grain Cinnamon Applesauce Bread

The garden is slowing. You can feel it — the tomatoes are smaller, the beans are thinning, the zucchini has finally, mercifully, stopped producing at a rate that required diplomatic distribution to the neighbors. The days are shorter by twenty minutes, which doesn't sound like much but changes the light completely. The late afternoon shadows stretch longer across the yard, reaching for the sugarhouse like fingers. August is ending. It always ends too soon, even when it lasts forever.

I made pickles. Bread-and-butter pickles, Helen's recipe, which requires cucumbers we grew specifically for this purpose — the small, firm ones that pickling demands, not the big watery ones you eat in salads. You slice them thin with onions, salt them, let them sit for two hours, then cook them in a brine of vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric. The turmeric turns them golden. The vinegar preserves them. The sugar makes them sweet. The whole kitchen smells like autumn even though it's still technically summer, and the jars on the shelf glow like small suns.

Twelve pints. They'll last until next August, if we're disciplined. We won't be. The pickles will be gone by Christmas because I eat them on sandwiches and Helen eats them straight from the jar and Frost eats any that hit the floor, which happens more often than you'd think because pickle jars are slippery and my hands aren't what they were.

Helen and I put the garden partially to bed this week. Pulled the spent bean vines, composted the yellow zucchini leaves, staked the remaining tomatoes more securely for the September winds that are coming. The garden in late August is like a party winding down — still going, still alive, but quieter, smaller, the energy shifting from growth to completion. You feel it in the soil. The dirt is tired. It's given everything it had. Now it rests.

I wrote a blog post about putting the garden to bed. The metaphor writes itself — growth, harvest, rest, renewal — and I didn't press it because Hemingway taught me that the reader will find the metaphor without your help, and if they don't, pressing won't make it clearer. Three people wrote to say they were putting their own gardens to bed this week. One said she cried while pulling her tomato vines. I understand. You grow something for four months and then it's done, and the empty row where it stood is a kind of absence. Small, but real.

Pickles on the shelf. Garden winding down. The light is changing. We change with it.

Twelve pints of bread-and-butter pickles lined up on the shelf demand something worthy to go with them — and this whole grain cinnamon applesauce bread has been Helen’s answer to that for as long as I can remember. It uses the same unhurried rhythm as a pickle day: you mix it, you wait a little, you pull it out of the oven and the kitchen smells exactly like what the season is becoming. The applesauce keeps it moist through the week, and a thick slice with a few pickles alongside is, in my honest opinion, one of the finer lunches a person can make for themselves in late August.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 55 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes | Servings: 12 slices

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 1/4 cups unsweetened applesauce
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
2 large eggs
1/3 cup neutral oil (canola or vegetable)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and prepare. Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan and set it aside.
Combine the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg until evenly mixed.
Mix the wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the applesauce, brown sugar, honey, eggs, oil, and vanilla until smooth and the sugar is mostly dissolved.
Fold together. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold gently with a spatula until just combined — a few streaks of flour are fine. Do not overmix. Fold in the walnuts if using.
Fill and bake. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is deep golden brown.
Cool before slicing. Let the loaf rest in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack. Wait at least 20 minutes before slicing — it finishes setting as it cools and will slice cleanly rather than crumble.

Nutrition (per serving)

Whole Grain Cinnamon Applesauce Bread — Something to Put the Pickles On