Last Updated on July 28, 2023 by Aaron von Frank
This healthy summer breakfast bread recipe is a perfect way to use up lots of fresh produce from your summer garden. Put your extra zucchini and seasonal berries to good use!
It’s now early summer which means we have lots of fresh berries and summer squash/zucchini coming out of our garden.
Strawberry season is about wrapped up. We just passed peak raspberry season, but blueberries, wonderberries, ground cherries, and blackberries are just starting to ripen. Our fridge still looks like a berry farm cooler.
At this point in the year, it also starts getting difficult to keep up with all the summer squash and zucchini coming off the plants (assuming the squash vine borers are kept at bay).
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to use all of this produce in a single, simple healthy recipe?
Summer berries and zucchini from the garden.
What should I eat for breakfast in summer?
In the summer, we like quick, healthy breakfasts so we can start the day off right — as quickly as possible — before it gets scorching hot outside.
Breakfast staples in the summer include:
- duck eggs from our Welsh Harlequins (protein and good fat),
- a cup of tea or coffee (get hydrated plus get a little caffeine boost), and
- healthy breakfast bread (healthy = whole grains, whole fruit, whole veggies, and all organic ingredients).
We store our summer breakfast bread in the fridge, and carve off a slice each morning at breakfast. Total time to prep a good breakfast? About 5 minutes!
A breakfast you’ll be berry excited about.
Does this breakfast bread recipe freeze well?
Yep, this breakfast bread recipe also stores well in the freezer. Three tips:
- Pre-slice it before you freeze it so you can easily grab a piece out when you want it.
- When you want a piece, simply pull out a single slice and pop it in the microwave or toaster oven until it’s warm.
- Make sure the bread is well-wrapped and stored inside an airtight bag (like a freezer bag) so it doesn’t get freezer burned.
Other ingredients you can substitute in this summer bread recipe
You can mix and match multiple types of seasonal berries/fruit for this recipe, according to your flavor preferences and what’s seasonable available:
- serviceberries
- ground cherries
- elderberries
- currants
- strawberries
- blueberries
- blackberries
- cherries
- gooseberries
- goji berries
- mulberries
- goumi berries
A few summer berry varieties that make ideal candidates for this recipe: lemonade blueberries, regular blueberries, gold and red raspberries, and wonderberries (the small black berries).
If you use larger berries like strawberries, just cut them into smaller pieces no bigger than the size of a blackberry so you don’t end up with huge chunks of wet fruit surrounded by patches of uncooked breakfast bread.
Can you use frozen berries? Sure!
The best citrus zest…
One other note: we grow lots of citrus in pots. In our opinion the two best varieties of citrus for lemon zest are: 1) Buddhas hand citron, or 2) a perfectly ripe Meyer lemon. For this recipe, we got a ripe Buddhas hand off of our tree.
Buddha’s hand citron, from flower to harvest.
Buddhas hand citron isn’t like most citrus – it’s all pith. But the pith is incredibly floral and flavorful, hence its reason for being a great citrus for zest.
Buddha’s hand citron zest: in our opinion, this is the best ingredient you can use for “lemon zest.”
To give your summer breakfast bread the most zip, use the zest from a ripe Meyer lemon or Buddhas hand (ideally organically grown).
Summer breakfast bread with zucchini and seasonal berries
This healthy summer breakfast bread is made with organic stone ground whole wheat flour and garden-fresh produce: zucchini and seasonal berries.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup organic old-fashioned rolled oats
- 2 cups organic, stone ground whole wheat flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 2 duck eggs (or 2 large chicken eggs)
- 1 cup organic cane sugar
- 6 tablespoons grapeseed oil
- 2 tablespoons lemon zest recommend Buddha's hand or Meyer lemons
- 1 1/2 cups shredded zucchini
- 2 cups fresh seasonal berries
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 350°F. Coat a 9"x5" loaf pan with butter or cooking spray.
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Lay the oats on a baking sheet or tin foil and toast in the oven for approximately 10 minutes, or until lightly browned. Allow oats to cool until no longer hot to the touch.
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Add the following dry ingredients to a mixing bowl: toasted oats, whole wheat flour, baking powder, sea salt. Stir to combine.
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In another bowl, add sugar, eggs, oil, and lemon zest - then mix. (We zest our lemons/Buddhas hands with the fine side of a cheese grater or a microplane.) Add shredded zucchini - then mix. (We shred our zucchini with the large side of a cheese grater.)
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Add the ingredients from the dry bowl to the wet bowl and mix until fully incorporated. Fold in berries.
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Bake in oven for ~70 minutes. The breakfast bread is done when: 1) it's golden brown on top, and 2) you insert a toothpick into the center and it pulls out without ooey gooey dough on it. Keep in mind with this recipe that the bread is filled with berries so a toothpick covered in berry goo doesn't mean the bread isn't done! You don't want to overcook the bread or it will be dry.
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Remove bread from oven and let cool in pan for 15 minutes. Using a butter knife, gently loosen the bread from the outside of the pan on all four sides. Next, using two oven mitts, flip the bread out of the pan, then place on cooling rack to cool for 1 hour before serving.
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Optional - Want a lemon glaze for the top? Stir together 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar + 1.25 teaspoons lemon juice, then pour over top of bread.
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See step-by-step pictures in section below!
Step-by-step pictures: making summer breakfast bread
In case you’re wondering how finely to grate your zucchini for this recipe…
Mixing wet and dry ingredients.
Adding and folding in the berries. Note that in this recipe, you don’t have to coat the berries in flour to keep them from sinking in the bread because the batter is so thick!
All ingredients mixed together and ready to go into the bread pan.
Ready for the oven!
Summer breakfast bread out of the oven and cooled for 15 minutes.
Summer breakfast bread cooling on a cooling rack… almost ready to eat!
Breakfast is served! Whole wheat breakfast bread with zucchini and seasonal berries.
We hope you and your family LOVE this summer breakfast bread recipe as much as we do!
KIGI,
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6 Comments
Lisa Durette
December 6, 2019 at 9:23 pmWe’ve made this breakfast bread several times now. I added lemon zest the last time and it was even tastier.
Aaron von Frank
December 8, 2019 at 2:06 pmAwesome! Glad to hear your breakfast bread turned out well. Adding lemon zest to the recipe is a great idea.
SeaDancer
June 21, 2019 at 8:50 pmOur berries aren’t ripe yet. Up to $4.50 a pint here for Blueberries! More for other kinds. At Walmart, no less. Sigh…so, I’m finding lots to ferment! Rhubarb Spears? Got `em three different ways!
SeaDancer
June 21, 2019 at 9:03 pmPS: I’m getting 2 emails the same from you guys. (And the Chickweed is only about two inches right now. Ate some this morning!)
Aaron von Frank
June 22, 2019 at 9:50 amSorry about that! Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it since it’s one of the quirks of MailChimp (our third party email service) when you have multiple content categories like we do on our blog.
Enjoy that chickweed! Ours has been gone since May and won’t start showing up again until fall.
Aaron von Frank
June 22, 2019 at 9:50 amIt’s virtually impossible to grow rhubarb here since it’s too warm. So we don’t have too much experience with them. Fermenting sounds like a good way to go! There’s bound to be plenty of fermented rhubarb recipes on the net. Enjoy!