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This lightly sweet gluten free zucchini bread is made with tons of shredded zucchini and oil instead of butter for the most tender crumb that stays fresh for days.
The secret to bread that comes out with the right texture every time is squeezing the extra moisture out of shredded zucchini, then measuring the right amount. No more spongy bread because your vegetables were too big!
“We’ve made more loaves of this zucchini bread than I can count. Friends and family delight in the rich, moist treat. So yummy!”
My take
Why you'll love this zucchini bread
This bread is full of flavor, never mushy, and browns beautifully in the oven.
The secret is in the preparation. Use whatever zucchini or squash you have, since it will always have the same amount of moisture as mine after you get rid of the excess.
Plus, we puree some of the zucchini with oil and eggs. That traps enough moisture in an emulsion to create a tender crumb that still has tons of flavor.
what's in it
Recipe ingredients
- Gluten free flour blend – Any high quality gluten free flour blend with finely ground rice flour should work here. Be sure to add xanthan gum if your blend doesn't contain it.
- Salt – balances out and complements all the other ingredients
- Baking powder – adds rise
- Baking soda – helps browning in the oven
- Cinnamon – adds a lovely, warm spicy but subtle taste to your bread; optional
- Chocolate chips – optional, but adds some extra flavor
- Sugars – add sweetness, tenderness, and depth of flavor from the molasses in the brown sugar
- Oil – We use a neutral oil (options include canola, vegetable, grapeseed, peanut, safflower, peanut, or avocado oil) to blend with some of the zucchini to create an emulsion that adds tons of moisture and tenderizes the bread
- Zucchini – after being squeezed of excess water, it adds the right amount of moisture so the bread stays tender but bakes fully
- Eggs – add structure and bind the bread together
- Vanilla – adds depth of flavor
substitutions
Ingredient substitutions
Dairy free
Since the bread made with oil instead of butter, it's naturally dairy free. If you're dairy free, though, make sure your chocolate chips are, too.
Egg free
Try two “chia eggs” (2 tablespoons ground white chia seeds + 2 to 3 tablespoons lukewarm water, mixed and allowed to gel). A “flax egg” might also work, but tends to add unwelcome flavor.
How to make gluten free zucchini bread
This is a simple recipe that is mixed together beginning with dry ingredients, then adding wet ingredients. But the wet ingredients are prepared a bit differently. Let's walk through the recipe:
Prepare the zucchini
Grate the zucchini on a standard size box grater or in a food processor fitted with the shredder blade. Wrap it in a tea towel or paper towels and wring out as much moisture as possible.
Whisk dry ingredients, blend wet
Whisk all the dry ingredients (gluten free flour blend including xanthan gum, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, if using, and sugars) in a large mixing bowl.
Toss the chocolate chips in a bit of the dry ingredients and set them aside. Add half the zucchini to the dry ingredients and mix throughout.
Blend the rest of the zucchini with the eggs, oil, and vanilla, then add the puree into the dry ingredients.
Transfer to a loaf pan and bake
Mix the batter until smooth then add in the chocolate chips. Transfer the raw batter to a greased loaf pan.
Bake at 325°F until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean. Allow it to cool briefly in the pan, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
My Pro Tip
Expert tips
Zucchini prep
You can drain the grated zucchini by placing it in in the center of a tea towel (just a kitchen towel with a flat weave that doesn't shed) or an old clean t-shirt, and squeezing it until no more liquid drains.
A strong mesh bag called a nut milk bag also works great. This is my favorite nut milk bag because it's strong and durable.
Measure ingredients accurately
Measure your dry ingredients with a simple digital kitchen scale whenever possible, and ignore the volume measurements. And be sure to measure the shredded zucchini after you've drained it, not before.
Gluten Free Zucchini Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups (210 g) all purpose gluten free flour blend, (See Recipe Notes)
- ½ teaspoon xanthan gum, omit if your blend already contains it
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, (optional)
- ⅔ cup (4 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate chips, (dairy free, if necessary)(can omit or replace with chopped nuts)
- ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- ½ cup (109 g) packed light brown sugar
- 2 ⅛ cups (215 g) drained grated zucchini, (weight is zucchini as drained of liquid; See Recipe Notes)
- 2 (100 g (weighed out of shell)) eggs, at room temperature
- ¼ cup (56 g) neutral oil, (like grapeseed, canola or vegetable oil)
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 325°F. Grease a standard 9-inch x 5-inch loaf pan and set it aside.
- In a large bowl, place flour, xanthan gum, salt, baking soda, baking powder and optional cinnamon, and whisk to combine well.
- Place the chocolate chips in a small bowl, add about 1 teaspoon of the dry ingredients to the chips and toss to combine. Set the chips aside.
- To the flour mixture, add the granulated sugar and light brown sugar, and whisk to combine (working out any lumps in the brown sugar).
- Add 1 1/4 cups (125 g) of the grated zucchini to the dry ingredients, and mix gently to combine. Set aside the dry ingredients.
- Place the remaining 7/8 cup (88 g) of grated zucchini, the eggs, oil and vanilla in a blender, and pulse until well-blended and beginning to emulsify.
- Create a well in the center of the bowl of dry ingredients, and add the wet ingredient mixture. The batter will be very wet.
- Add about 1/2 cup of the chocolate chips and reserved dry ingredients to the batter and mix until the chips are evenly distributed throughout the batter.
- Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan, and smooth the top with a wet spatula. Scatter the remaining chocolate chips on top and press down lightly to adhere.
- Place the loaf pan in the center of the preheated oven.
- Bake, rotating once, until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of each loaf comes out with a few moist crumbs attached (about 50 minutes).
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 30 minutes in the loaf pan before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before slicing and serving.
Video
Notes
My favorite gluten free flour blends are Better Batter's original blend gluten free flour and Nicole's Best multipurpose blend. Bob's Red Mill 1-to-1 Gluten Free Baking Flour should work if you add 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum. Cup4Cup changed its formula and doesn't seem to work as well as it has in the past, so I don't recommend it. To make your own blend using one of my “mock” recipes, please see the all purpose gluten free flour blends page.
Grate at least one large or two smaller zucchini. Placing it in in the center of a tea towel (just a kitchen towel with a flat weave that doesn't shed), wrap the cloth tightly, and squeeze until there's almost no liquid left. The shredded and drained zucchini will clump and not feel wet, only damp, to the touch. Now, measure it on your digital kitchen scale. Grate and drain more zucchini as necessary to reach the proper amount of zucchini for this recipe. If you have any left over, freeze it in a freezer-safe bag or other container and defrost as needed.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
make ahead/leftovers
Storage instructions
Short term
Wrap the bread (or slices) plastic wrap and a zip-top bag and the bread should last about 3 days on the counter.
Longer term
Wrap leftovers tightly in freezer safe wrap and store in the freezer for about 3 months. Defrost at room temperature.
To refresh
Sprinkle lightly with lukewarm water and place in a 300°F toaster oven for about 5 minutes.
Prep ahead
Grate and drain fresh zucchini, and freeze it to use another time. Just let it defrost at room temperature, gently squeeze out any remaining moisture you didn't remove the first time, and then proceed with the recipe as written.
FAQs
No! The taste of zucchini does not come through at all, even though you can see the green flecks of the vegetable that wasn't pureed.
Yes. Feel free to add walnuts, raisins, shredded coconut, and other dry mix-ins to your zucchini bread.
You can use frozen grated zucchini—but only if you had removed most of its moisture before freezing it. Otherwise, frozen zucchini with all its moisture would become mushy as it defrosted.
I don't like this recipe as muffins, instead of a quick bread. Instead, use this recipe for gluten free zucchini muffins instead.
If your bread sank in the middle as it cooled, it wasn't baked all the way through. If your oven runs hot, the outside will bake too quickly and the inside will remain raw. I always recommend baking with a standalone oven thermometer that you replace often. In addition, if you didn't wring enough moisture out of your zucchini, the extra moisture won't be able to bake all the way out, leaving you with a sunken middle and gummy texture.
Hi Nicole – All I can say is “YUM!!!” can’t wait to try this. Only problem is that my one daughter hates banana. Can I substitute more Zucchini … or maybe some applesauce for the banana? Or something else perhaps? Could I also take the same recipe and use pumpkin instead of the zucchini?
Thanks so much for all you do. Can’t wait to get your cookbook.
I would suggest trying it with 1 whole cup of oil, rather than 1/2 cup, if you’re looking to eliminate the banana, Jane. Not applesauce, which has a much, much higher water content. But I have to say that you don’t actually taste the banana in the finished product, if that matters.
xoxo Nicole
Perfect timing! This was the first year planting a little garden. I planted zucchini and was successful. Successful because I have nothing to compare it to. My plants are done producing but I have several zukes sitting on the counter. I make this tomorrow when I can get to the store for extra large eggs. I don’t feel like doing the math for regular.
It sounds like your zucchini plants have a lot of dignity, Jeri. They did their work, and then bowed out gracefully. I have never had that experience with zucchini!
xoxo Nicole
Hi Nicole,
I absolutely love zucchini bread and will definitely have to give this a try! I don’t like nuts in bread and I doubt my kiddos would like it either. And I’m not real sure I would like the chocolate chips, although I think they would. Anyway can I do without the nuts or chips? Do I need to add more of something else? Thanks so much!
Emily
You’ll need something, Emily, that is relatively dry and in small pieces, like nuts or chips.
Nicole
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! I will try this later this week. (gotta wait until I hit the farmer’s market- our zucchini didn’t cooperate this year) GFBoy is over the moon excited about this.
You bet, Janet. Nice to hear from you. :)
xoxo Nicole
Hi! If I wanted to make it more chocolatey, how much cocoa can I add?
Hi, Angelyn,
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that – just adding cocoa. I have a separate recipe for chocolate zucchini bread that I promise to post soon!
xoxo Nicole
Nicole, I notice your recipes call for extra large eggs. I have regular large eggs that are laid by my friend’s chicken. Would 3 of those work the same.. or would I have to add more eggs? This has always confused me a bit.
Hi, Beth,
That’s a good question. It gets asked quite often, actually. I would put it in the FAQs but I have a sneaking suspicion no one reads those anyway. ;) Extra-large eggs, on average, weigh 2.25 ounces broken (about 63 g) each. Large eggs, on average, weigh 2 ounces broken (about 56 g) each. So I would just go by weight, as beaten. What great good fortune to have a friend with a laying hen!
Nicole
Glad to see this post! My parents have chickens and I’m continually sent home with eggs which I honestly don’t use very often. My brother has chickens too as well as ducks which lay larger eggs. So knowing that you can go by weight is VERY helpful! =)
What an embarrassment of relatives with chickens, Angie! I wish I either had relatives with chickens, too. Use those fresh eggs! Nothing store-bought can hold a candle to them.
xoxo Nicole
Nicole,
I love your recipes, but–horrors of horrors!–I need to lose 30lbs so I am dieting. Yes, dieting. UGH! I am not a dieter. Until I turned 50 I could always get it under control by stepping up my exercise but not anymore. I don’t want to abandon trying out your recipes, but I notice you don’t include nutritional info in your online recipes (Calories, Fat, Carbs, Protein, Fiber and Sodium are a dieter’s basics to be tracked). Do you have any solutions to figuring out this info for your recipes or must I just take a break for awhile. I love zucchini bread. I’d really like to make it to take to work and save one slice for myself as a treat!
Hi, Linda,
I don’t include nutritional information in any of my recipes (which I think you’ll find is the case with almost all food bloggers and cookbook authors unless that information is directly relevant to the content of the site or book), but it is easy to plug in the recipe to this site and do the calculation yourself. This particular recipe is quite low in fat, since it only has 1/4 cup of oil per loaf, so you might find that an occasional slice fits in with your diet. Best of luck!
xoxo Nicole
I have a green thumb too and love zucchini and yes, it grows like weeds. I even found a recent post that showed how to split the stem to get two zucchinis off one flower.
So, as I use us my zucchini and make all kinds of gf treats and leave them at work, I found this…since I have young kids, we are going to do this…kinda on the lines of being “Booed” at Halloween..this is being Zuked!
Thanks for the recipe, another one I will try with my growing population!
Oh my gosh, Candace, that is so funny. I have heard of people giving unsolicited “gifts” of zucchini in the summer months in some communities, but dressing them up first really makes the practice all but irresistible. Love it! I must admit that I hate being “boo-ed” around Halloween because of the whole gluten-free issue, among many other reasons. But this – this is priceless. Why would anyone want to double their zucchini output, though?!
xoxo Nicole
I like raisins in my zucchini bread, would you still suggest 8 oz of raisins so the bread will stay moist?
Hi, Rochelle,
I would suggest 8 ounces of raisins, not for reasons related to moisture balance but just for bulk.
xoxo Nicole
great thanks!! I’ve made the zucchini bread for my gluten family but now it’s my turn and I can’t wait to make this recipe!!
Have you ever attempted to make pop tarts? This little girl I know went gluten free about 3 weeks ago and the thing she misses the most is pop tarts.
There’s a recipe for Apple-Cinnamon Toaster Pastries in my cookbook, Fatcat.
Nicole