Even as I sit here, I am enjoying a fruit and nut bread that I created just for the sake of using up some ingredients.  I bet lots of you do this kind of stuff - like adding spinach to a herb bread for more colour, or adding garlic to a cheese bread (duh!).  Let's dedicate a thread to some of our own best ideas.  Fortunately, I find improvisation doesn't require weighing, percentages, exact timing - so my "recipes" will be quick to type.  If your impros require the aforementioned, include them! 

 I had two great successes:

 Last night, I found some aging dried mangos.  I chopped them up, added some leftover currents and a small complimentary package of dried cranberries.  Ended up with about a cup.  Poured in enough water to cover them.

In the morning, I found a recipe for a fruit bread that suited my timetable and the other ingredients I had on hand (Glazed Raisin Bread from Bernard Clayton, I'm sure any recipe would do).  I generally followed the technique, if not the recipe - I have to add whole wheat, (I have a great fear of completely white bread, unless it's a proper baguette, but I digress), and added 1/2 c chickpea flour that I bought and don't seem to be using quickly enough- it's kinda sweet.  Oh, and I had about 1/2 c of loosely chopped almonds from some crepe desserts we had eaten earlier in the week, and I threw those in as well.  It's WONDERFUL.  (Runs for another piece)

 (Licks off fingers)  I'm back.  My other selfmade favourite was a carrot/curry bread I created a few months back.  I was trying to use up the last of my garden carrots - naturally bread came to mind - but I wanted a little punch.  I looked in my pantry, and found about a tablespoon of spice mixture I had leftover from a fried curry banana experiment.  I had a double batch of WW straun prepped from Peter Reinhart's latest, so to one of the loaves, I added about 1 1/2 c of grated carrots and the spice mixture.  WOWEE!    I had made a cumin loaf a while before, but despite loving cumin, the bread didn't have enough complexity.  This was deep, warm, slightly sweet, spicy, and delicious!  Unfortunately, I had not been that impressed with the curried bananas, and had returned the recipe book to the library.  To make a long story short, the library had misplaced it, and it took me months to get it back.  Here's the mixture, if you're interested:  1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp chili powder, 1/2 tsp tumeric, 1/2 tsp garam marsala.

 There's mine!  I'd love to here about yours!

 Failures would be interesting too, but I suppose that's another topic....