I am in the nuts in desserts fan camp. I know it’s a very hotly contested subject but if you want to put nuts in the brownies? Here for it. Adding walnuts to chocolate chip cookies? Sure! Cashews are my favorite nut, followed by pistachios. I got to thinking and that there are always walnuts or almonds in quick breads. Sometimes pecans but never pistachios. So, I decided to make this chocolate chunk pistachio bread!
A lot of pistachio flavored baked goods use instant pudding, but I wanted the real stuff. You want to make sure you use unsalted pistachios though. While I didn’t try it with salted, I’d imagine this bread would just be way too salty.
It’s a quick bread, so no yeast is involved and start to finish baking, it only will take about an hour and a half. Less if you can find your pistachios already shelled. This took the longest for me. While I like big walnut chunks in my zucchini bread, for this bread I wanted to grind the pistachios pretty finely so there would be pistachio flavor in every bite. Then I decided to use chopped baking chocolate in lieu of chocolate chips so it would be more melty and create flecks, pockets and rivers of chocolate throughout.
Then just to make sure you get the full chocolate and pistachio flavor experience, I drizzled chocolate on top and sprinkled roughly chopped pistachios over that. It’s super good and your house smells amazing while it bakes. Plus, then you have delicious bread to eat.
Ingredients
- 210 g AP Flour 1¾ cup
- ½ tsp Salt
- 2 tsp Baking powder
- 200 g Dark brown sugar 1 cup
- 3 tbsp Unsalted butter room temp
- 1 large Egg room temp
- 1 tsp Vanilla extract
- ¼ cup Neutral oil vegetable or canola
- ¾ cup 2% or Whole milk room temp
- 115 g Unsalted pistachios ~1 cup without shells
- 4 oz Semi sweet chocolate chopped
Glaze
- 4 oz Semi sweet chocolate melted
- Pistachios optional
Instructions
- Lightly grease and/or line with parchment a loaf pan. If you are using a 9×5 loaf pan, the loaf will be a little flatter.
- Preheat oven to 350°F
- Pulse your unshelled pistachios in a food processor until they are finely chopped. I personally don't mind a few bigger chunks but MOST should be like a rough sand.
- Combine flour, salt, and baking powder and pistachios in a bowl. Whisk to mix
- Mix brown sugar with butter, either by hand or mixer. I used a hand mixer over a stand mixer. The sugar will look like wet sand.
- Add in the egg to the sugar and butter and combine well.
- Add in vanilla and oil to sugar mixture until homogenous.
- Gently stir milk into wet ingredients until combined.
- Fold in your flour pistachio mixture into the wet mix with a spatula. Mix until just combined, no dry flour remaining. Do not overmix. Your batter will most likely not be smooth, depending on how finely chopped your nuts are.
- Chop your chocolate to your desired level and fold into batter.
- Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake on center rack for 50-70 minutes. Check loaf with toothpick starting at 50 minutes. Bake time is going to vary depending on pan size and color. It may bake closer to 50 minutes in a 9×5 pan and closer to 70 minutes in an 8×4 pan. Bread is done when toothpick comes out cleanly.
- Let bread cool in loaf pan for about 10 minutes before removing and letting cool on a wire rack.
- While your bread is cooling, melt your chocolate and then drizzle over top of bread. You can also add additional chopped pistachios on top for added crunch. Enjoy!
Notes
- Dark chocolate or milk chocolate could definitely be swapped for semi-sweet.
