Pumpkin bread success!
I dont have any photos as the camera's battery went flat :S But the pumpkin bread was soooo great and tasted wonderful. it even had pumpkin flavour and was quite yellow.
Ingredients.
2/3 of a butternut pumpkin/squash chopped. seeded, peeled, boiled, drained and mashed.
500 grams of bread flour. (I used 1/3 cup of gluten glour which was approx 50g and made up the excess of weight with 100g spelt flour, 200g wheat wholemeal flour, 100g of white flour and made the rest up with rye approx 50g maybe a bit more.)
1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast.
1/2 to 2/3 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of buttermilk-extra incase dough is dry.
1 pinch nutmeg
1 pinch cinnamon (like 1/8 teaspoon each)
peppittas or pumpkin seeds to decorate.
Extra flour for kneading
1 egg beaten for egg wash.
Method.
Put the flours, salt and yeast in a large bowl. mix to distribute.
Make a well in the centre of the flour and add the mashed potato...still warm, the spices and the buttermilk. Mix to combine into a sticky ball. add extra buttermilk if too dry and add extra flour if too wet. it should come together into a sticky ball. it will be moist and sticky, but not difficult to handle.
Knead this for about 10-12 mins, keep flouring the bench as I found it was very sticky. After 8 mins or so it does become pliable and soft, but still sticks easily to your hands.
oil a bowl and leave it to rise for about 90 mins or until it doubles in size.
Fold a few times to give it some extra strength and leave it to rise again for maybe an hour.
Shape, cover in pumpkin seeds and let proof. It actually proofs quite fast, I think it is because of the sugars in the pumpkin and preheat the oven to 200deg celcius.
Slash the loaf and coat with egg wash. place in the oven and steam. keep spraying walls (or what ever your steaming habbits are) for the first 5 mins at 30 sec-1 min intervals.
Bake for about 45 mins.
Let cool.
We cut it when it was still warm and the crumb was still a tiny but sticky or moist but today it is fine. It really is a lovely bread. great with stuffed squash (thanks for the recipe jmonkey)
I will be making this again, and next time I will take a picture!
I hoipe who ever tries this they enjoy it. Myself and my dinner guests did!
thegreenbaker
Comments
and I thought you must be a REALLY NEW baker if a little baking powder success was a happy surprise...but I like pumpkin bread as well as the next goblin, so I stopped by to take a look, and I was the one surprised. Sounds really interesting, and I'm some disappointed you've got no pictures. Do you have an idea how much pumpkin ended up in the dough?
Hi Browndog5,
I could estimate it was about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin mash.
I am sorry I didnt measure it or weigh it. I was kind of in a rush.....but I did cut ip 2/3's of an average sized butternut pumpkin. deseded and peeled it. chopped it up and boiled it till tender and mushy. I let the liquid almost dry up...but so that it was still moist. then I just mashed it up and threw it in. :S
I am not so new. I began my bread baking journey in November last year. I spent a good few months making bricks and heavy dense loaves, but it has been about 2 months since I began making sandwich loaves worthy of something more than butter and vegemite!
I feel confident enough to experiment and throw things together. :)
thegreenbaker
oh, it was just my initial impression because I thought you meant a pumpkin quick bread you'd been struggling with and finally got to come out! I'm not much on precision measuring either, but some pumpkins are big enough to sit in around here, so I thought a ball-park figure would be good. Thanks! Get those batteries recharged!
Greenbaker, I'm wondering if Pumpkin has the same meaning to me and we are talking about the same veggie. The taste of a pumpkin and butternut squash are distinctly different. The image on the left are pumpkins and on the right a Butternut. Are either of these what you used?
Eric
ehanner.
The one on the right is what I used.
In Australia, they are all pumpkins :)
I used mini squashes the other night. I baked them and stuffed them and I really didnt like their taste. I should have used a smaller butternut for that recipe. So, I know what you mean by having different tastes...but the taste of a butternut is something we australians associate with "pumpkin" not "Squash"
So confusing!
Greenbaker, have you tried caramelizing the squash after it is cooked to bring out the sweetness in the flavor? I first did this with carrots years ago and it is nothing short of amazing how good they are.
First cut a large bunch into even sizes so they are all done about the same time and select a pan just large enough to hold what you are cooking. Then add maybe 3 Tablespoons of water and bring to a boil covered. Reduce heat to just maintain the steam coming out from the top. You might have to add to the water if the heat is to high. When the carrots are done (soft) stir and let them cook a bit longer uncovered to caramelize and even get a little brown on the bottom. Whala you will not believe how good they are. NOW-
When I read your post about pumpkin bread I thought to myself, I bet that would work with steamed Butternut (pumpkin) as well and be even better carmelized.
So, thanks greenbaker, that's my plan I'll rich-en up the flavor with the natural sugar in the squash. I can hardly wait!.
Eric