The Historic No-Yeast Bread That Intrinsically Features Peanut Butter

Where does your mind go when you think of no-yeast bread? Perhaps you picture the matzo made hurriedly by ancient Israelites as they fled Egypt, as told by the story of Exodus in the Old Testament. Maybe you think of Irish soda bread or the growing number of vegan baked goods lining grocery shelves. If you're up to speed on your food history, you might even think back to the Natufians, the group of hunter-gatherers who historians believe were responsible for the first bread (which was, according to bioarcheologist Andreas Heiss, yeast-free).

If you're of the 394,000 members of the popular Reddit board /r/Old_Recipes, the topic of no-yeast bread might remind you of a 1932 recipe from the Five Roses Flour Company cookbook. The recipe was all the rage among Reddit users (and other curious bakers) when it hit the board back in 2018. The key ingredient? Peanut butter. If you like the idea of bread that tastes like a peanut butter cookie, as one user put it, you'll be glad to know that it only takes a few ingredients and an hour of your time to make the loaf at home. 

Making bread at home — as so many of us learned during the pandemic-era sourdough craze — takes a lot of time and patience. That's not the case with this peanut butter bread. As user @trixietravisbrown explained on Reddit, the quick bread calls for two cups of flour, a quarter cup of sugar, four teaspoons of baking powder, a half teaspoon of salt, one and a third cups of milk, and a half cup of peanut butter. If you're a frequent or semi-frequent baker, you probably have those things on hand right now. 

Simply mix the dry ingredients together, followed by the milk, and finally the peanut butter. Pour the mixture into a greased loaf pan and bake it at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour, or until the top is lightly golden brown.

The bread gets great reviews on its own, but the comment section is filled with ideas for easy add-ins to make it even more delicious. Suggestions include swirling Nutella into the batter, spreading strawberry preserves on top, adding bananas, or treating it like French toast with a drizzle of maple syrup and a dusting of powdered sugar. If you're a fan of peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, you might even try pairing a slice with a kosher dill. 

Just like Navy bean soup, sugar cream pie, and corn dog casserole, peanut butter bread was popular during the Great Depression. Its affordable, nutritious, and made from easy-to-find ingredients were essential criteria for struggling households. Plus, as Reddit users suggest, it was easy to dress up and serve as a much-needed treat. 

However, peanut butter bread was around before the historic stock market crash forced home cooks to pinch their pennies. An earlier version of the recipe was published in the seminal 1901 "Settlement Cookbook" by Lizzie Black Kander and calls for the same ingredients as the Five Roses recipe, with slightly varied measurements. Kaner was a central figure of the Settlement House movement, which, in part, taught Jewish immigrants to cook American dishes. To that end, one might call peanut butter bread a forgotten staple.

History aside, the most enticing reason to make peanut butter bread might be one Reddit user's claim that their toddler "was able to do 80% of the work."