FYI - Whenever you need oat flour, you can make your own by blending oatmeal into a fine powder in your blender or food processor. It takes approximately 1-1/2 c. of oatmeal to make about 1-cup oat flour.

When solid fats and sugar are creamed together it is called the "cake" method (or shortened cake method); while the method where liquid fat and other wet ingredients are mixed and added to the dry ingredients is called the "muffin" method.

Quick breads (including muffins) made by creaming fat and sugar will be more tender, but they are also more cake-like. You also get more volume from creaming the sugar/fat because of the air in the mixture. When beat thoroughly, the sugar will also break down creating that cake-like texture. In order to do it right, creaming fat and sugar can't be done quickly.

When the fat is in liquid form (either solid fat that is melted, or liquid cooking oil), added with the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients, you'll get a more coarse, open texture.

Fat directly impacts the tenderness, quick breads with a high fat content not only taste rich, they also have a softer crumb. Low-fat and/or low-sugar quick breads need other ingredients to help keep it from drying out quickly - fruit puree, oatmeal or oat flour, buttermilk... Too much fat (did I mention my mother-in-laws recipe for pumpkin bread???) will make a very dense, heavy quick bread.

Every step of making quick breads is geared towards low gluten development.

--Always keep mixing to a bare minimum. Skip using the electric mixer (except if creaming ingredients) and grab a Danish Dough Whisk instead. If you over-develop the gluten strands, then leavening gasses have to work hard to "drill" their way through the batter and will leave narrow holes and tunnels that run from the bottom to the top - a sign of over-mixing.

--When possible, choose low-gluten flour, like Southern all-purpose flour (White Lily, Martha White). Stay away from King Arthur All-Purpose Flour or Robin Hood which tend to be higher in protein than National Brand all-purpose flour (Gold Medal or Pillsbury). I mill soft white wheat or a 50/50 mix of hard wheat and spelt for lower gluten flour. A 3:1 mix of hard wheat and oats will also work.

-We often relegate really OVER-ripe bananas for making banana bread. This can alter the crumb of your quick bread if the recipe only contains soda as the chemical leavening. The acidity of bananas decreases the more ripe they get, and their reaction as an acid ingredient in partnership with baking soda may be a weak one, especially if there isn't any other acid ingredient (i.e. citrus juice, buttermilk, molasses, yogurt, etc.). To avoid this, a good banana bread recipe, in order to ensure adequate leavening, should have both baking powder AND baking soda.

-Grainlady