Gluten-Free Pear Bread

I am one of those people that complete strangers talk to. I don't know why, I am fairly shy and don't usually initiate conversations in grocery stores, but I must send out a signal that I don't mind if people talk to me…because they do! They walk up to me and ask me how to grow tomatoes in our area, they tell me that the mangoes are small here compared to South America, they call me “earth mother”, and they invite me to smell the pears.

The lady was right, the pears smelled great! Then she told me that I should make the Pear Bread recipe from Joy of Cooking. I thanked her and told her I had the cookbook at home and would look it up. And I did, but my edition did not have a pear bread recipe. The seed had been planted though and now I wanted to make pear bread. Because of a conversation with a complete stranger, I decided to create the below recipe:

Dry Ingredients:

1 cup brown rice flour
3/4 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (use 1 1/2 teaspoons if your pear or apple sauce is flavored with cinnamon)

Wet Ingredients:

1/2 cup pear sauce or apple sauce
1/4 cup pear juice or apple juice
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 large pears, diced (about 2 – 2 1/2 cups)
1 cup pecans, chopped (optional)

Directions:

1. Grease two 8×4 loaf pans. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients.

3. In a medium bowl, combine sauce, juice, sugar and eggs. Beat well. Add pears and pecans and stir until thoroughly combined.

4. Add pear mixture to flour mixture and mix well.

5. Divide batter between the loaf pans. Bake for 50 – 60 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Allow bread to cool in pans for 10 minutes and then move to a wire rack to finish cooling. The first loaf was gone before the sun set!