Pumpkin Bread

After receiving our huge pumpkins last week, I decided to make pumpkin bread. Since large pumpkins aren't exactly king on the flavor front, I thought a quick bread would be a great place to use it up. To begin, I cut up the pumpkin in sections and roasted them in the oven at 35o degrees for an hour or so. After this was done and cool, I scooped out the flesh and pureed it in my food processor. This gave me a ton of puree and I ended up making 4 loaves of pumpkin bread, most of which I gave out for holiday treats. I still had a few cups left of pumpkin puree, which you could easily freeze. I fed the puree to my dogs with their normal food because they really love pumpkin! It is very nutritious for us, as well as for our canine friends.

This recipe is adapted from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. salt

3/4 c. unrefined sugar

1. tsp baking soda

1 cup pumpkin puree

1/2 c. vegetable oil (I used sunflower)

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 c. water

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (the original recipe calls for allspice, but I didn't have it and pp spice has that in it plus ginger)

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sift together the flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda. Mix the pumpkin, oil, eggs, water, vanilla and spices together, then combine with dry ingredients, but do not mix too thoroughly. Stir in the pecans. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake 50-60 minutes until a knife comes out clean. Turn out of the loaf pan and cool on a rack.

This bread is moist and lightly spiced. It is great in the morning with a cup of coffee or in the afternoon with a cup of tea, or just as a snack! You could probably substitute another winter squash and it would turn out nicely as well.