HOLIDAY RECIPES: Sweet smell and tasty flavor of pumpkin bread

DANIEL CLIFTON • PICAYUNE EDITOR

MARBLE FALLS — After successfully baking pumpkin cookies, I decided to step up my culinary game and try something a little more complex: pumpkin bread. OK, maybe it’s not much more complicated, but it’s something I’ve never baked before. Until last week, my baking experience included one pumpkin pie (from scratch several years ago), some ready-to-bake cookie dough (though most of it was eaten pre-baked) and a piece of pottery.

Surprisingly, the pottery turned out to be the only thing I couldn’t eat, but then again, it wasn’t meant to be edible.

This week, as I bake and cook my way to Thanksgiving, Burnet County AgriLife extension agent Linda Sue Wells pulled out a nice little pumpkin bread recipe.

“It’s fairly easy like the cookies,” she explained. “I’ve never missed with it.”

Of course she’s never missed with it. She knows what she’s doing in a kitchen and how to use measuring spoons and cups. I’m still trying to figure out the difference between baking soda and baking powder (they both look like a powder to me.)

But I accepted the recipe and tucked it away. My wife, Sheri, didn’t send me packing to my mom’s this time but let me set up shop in her kitchen. She even helped me gather and measure a few of the ingredients (read that as: “If you’re going to make a mess of my kitchen, I’m going to limit the amount you can do and the space you do it in.”)

Linda’s recipe calls for four eggs, three cups of sugar and 3 1/2 cups of flour. Well, it’s quite a bit for my family, so Sheri again recommended cutting it in half. Now, I know I could share (like I did with the pumpkin cookies), but before I started handing out loaves of pumpkin bread, I wanted to make sure I could bake up a batch of it that wouldn’t leave people re-gifting it during the office white elephant present exchange.

So with all the ingredients gathered, oven preheating to 350 degrees and the Dallas Cowboys winning in London, I went to work.

Following Linda’s recipe, I put the oil, eggs and sugar into a bowl and started mixing. Then, after sifting the dry ingredients, I added them in, alternating with water, and continued mixing. Finally, the pumpkin went in to give the bread its holiday flavor.

Sheri recommended pouring some of the batter into muffin tins instead of making all loaves. So, after filling both muffin and loaf pans, I popped the mixture into the oven.

Instead of setting the timer for 45 minutes to an hour, we started out at 30 minutes. Since the muffins aren’t as large as a loaf of bread, they usually bake faster. So at 30 minutes, I checked the muffins, and sure enough they were ready to come out.

Sheri popped one out of the tin, cut it in half, added a dollop of butter and tried it.

“Mmm, that’s good,” she said.

Yes, I thought. I’m on my way to baking nirvana.

The loaf, however, required a bit more time in the oven and experimenting. At 45 minutes, the sides appeared done, but the center was still too moist.

Back in for five more minutes. Then five more.

Now, I’m sure Alton Brown has some culinary arts explanation for why a loaf requires more time than a muffin in the oven and how the heat circulates within the bread triggering all sorts of crazy reactions, but I’ll just say, typically, larger bodies of mass require more time to heat and thoroughly cook than smaller ones.

Whatever the reasons and science behind baking, I’m just going to say this pumpkin bread lived up to Linda’s claims. The pumpkin flavor anchored the bread and muffins but didn’t overpower it. It makes a great breakfast bread or something to enjoy as a snack.

The great things about using small loaf pans as Linda does versus the larger ones is it allows you to hand out some nice pumpkin-flavored gifts. Or just indulge yourself along with a cup of coffee or pumpkin-spiced latte. Well, maybe that’s a bit too much pumpkin.

After I pulled off the pumpkin bread, I turned to Sheri and said, “Hey, at this rate, what do you think about me opening up a pumpkin bakery and coffee shop?”

She paused and sighed a bit.

“All right,” she said. “You just keep on dreaming about it.”

It doesn’t look as if you’ll be seeing Daniel’s Pumpkin Cafe anytime soon. Unless you stop by the house after I’ve baked up a bunch of pumpkin bread and cookies.

daniel@thepicayune.com

PUMPKIN BREAD

(from Linda Sue Wells)

• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup oil
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 cups pumpkin
• 1 1/2 cups chopped nuts

Blend sugar, oil and eggs. Measure and sift dry ingredients together and alternate adding dry ingredients and water into mixture. Add pumpkin and nuts. Mix until well blended.

Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit (could you imagine if this was Celsius?) for 45 minutes to one hour.

Makes six small loaves or three large loaves.