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Perfect Pumpkin Bread

They say it doesn’t get more American than apple pie, but indigenous cooks were roasting pumpkin and mashing it with spices long before Europeans introduced the apple. Early settlers boiled pumpkin, reserved the sweet, starchy cooking water and added to their bread dough to moisten  and extend it.  In the 20th century,  the invention of chemical leaveners and canned pumpkin turned pumpkin bread into an easy seasonal staple. But roasting a whole pumpkin, which are plentiful at roadside farm stands this time of year, is more than worth the small amount of extra effort: just cut it in quarters, scoop out the insides (separate the seeds and roast them with salt and spices for a bonus treat!) stick it in the oven and in no time the house will be filled with the aroma of caramelized pumpkin that says fall like nothing else. Now you have your base ingredient for perfect pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake (click links for recipes!) 

Ingredients

Scale

Wet –

  • 1lb roast pumpkin flesh (pie or sugar pumpkin) 
  • 1.75 C sucanat (unrefined cane sugar)
  • 1 stick butter (4oz)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 C milk

Dry –

  • 5 oz bread flour (1 cup)
  • 5 oz whole wheat flour (1 cup)
  • 1 tsp Baking Soda 
  • 1 tsp Baking Powder
  • 1.5 tsp cinnamon
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • ½ tsp allspice
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

  1. Roast one pie pumpkin and scoop flesh into a mixing bowl. The flesh should be cooked well enough that it easily stirs into a pureé with a fork. 
  2. Preheat your oven to 350°.

 

  1. Line your loaf pan or muffin cups with parchment paper.
  2. Add all wet ingredients, melted butter, sugar and stir together 
  3. Melt butter and stir into wet ingredients.
  4. Stir all dry ingredients together, mixing thoroughly and making sure that there are no clumps in the baking powder or soda. 
  5. Pour the dry ingredients into the bowl containing the wet ingredients and mix just until the flour is all incorporated.
  6. Pour the batter into your lined baking container and bake in the oven until the center temperature reaches exactly 200°,  around 30 to 40 minutes.

  • Author: Ben Lester

Find it online: https://localgrain.org/perfect-pumpkin-bread/