Homemade Pumpkin Bread

Two years ago, I roasted my own pumpkins.  It was at that point that I realized that we needed more recipes for pumpkin.  Insert pumpkin bread.  I had always heard people talk about how awesome pumpkin bread was and a certain un-named major coffee shop has a pumpkin cream cheese bread that is to die for.  I wanted a bread like that in my repertoire. 

I searched online and found a recipe for pumpkin bread from the website where I first got the information about roasting the pumpkins.  I tried it that weekend and it was amazing!  Since then I have made this recipe about 20 different times and have changed very little.  I will admit that we now add chopped pecans and white chocolate chips this year and it makes it really special.  I recently took this to a potluck at my job and it was met with rave reviews. 

Homemade pumpkin bread

Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 65-70 mins

3.5 cups all purpose flour - I have used bread flour and it seems to work exactly the same
3 cups white sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp nutmeg - I grate my own for each use so sometimes I use more, sometimes less.  I have found that nutmeg is a taste that not everyone loves...
1.5 tsp salt
.5 tsp allspice
2 cups roasted pureed pumpkin
.5 cup water
1 cup vegetable oil
4 whole eggs, beaten
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.  I never use a mixer for this because you want to stir as little as possible and I get better control over the amount that is mixed with a whisk than the stand mixer.  After dry ingredients are mixed together, mix in wet ingredients until fully combined.  Pour into loaf pans.  This bread will rise a bit so I normally don't fill my loaf pans anymore than 3/4ths of the way full.  It normally takes 3 medium sized loaf pans - I use the aluminum ones.  Bake 65 - 70 mins.  I normally cool mine 10 minutes in the pans and then remove and cool completely on a wire rack. 

Enjoy! 

Cooking pumpkins

This year I wanted to do something super special for my awesome husband so I decided to make him a few pumpkin recipes made from "real" pumpkin, not the can stuff.  I wasn't sure how to go about doing this but I got A LOT of help from this woman's entries:  http://www.pickyourown.org/pumpkinpie.php

I will admit that I didn't fully explain my plans in advance to my husband, so he was a bit surprised when he came home to 8 pumpkins in the kitchen.  I will admit that I was originally intimidated with the thought of roasting and using pumpkin in this fashion but it turned out to be a lot easier than I originally imagined.  There does need to be a disclaimer here that while the steps of this process are not difficult, they are time consuming and this process is definitely not for everyone.  I think that everyone should do it once just to taste the difference between roasting your own pumpkin and using the can stuff.  I will also justify that I only used what are called "pie pumpkins" or "sugar pie pumpkins".  Supposedly you can use the normal jack-o-lantern pumpkins but I heard that they can be stringy and I didn't want to mess this up.  I got my pumpkins for 3 for $5 or 4 for $5 depending on the size and didn't have any issue paying that considering the amount of yield that we received. 

Now on with the show.  I bought my pumpkins from my local farmers market.  I have seen them at my local grocery store but not a lot of them and not consistently.  I didn't do any voodoo magic to try and figure out if they were ripe or able to be used.  I just picked 8 of them originally.  I saw originally because I am mildly ashamed to admit that I repeated this process again a few weeks later and came home with like 15.  Because of that shameful behavior there are approximately 40 cups of cooked pumpkin in my freezer right now.  If there happens to be a threat of the Apocalypse soon and you need pumpkin, you know where to go. 

Below are the steps that I followed.  You can adjust to fit your situation. 

1. Wash and dry your pumpkin.  Use soap.  I just used my dish soap.  Since you are not eating this part then it isn't necessary to get it totally spotless - your main focus is to remove dirt, mud, etc. 
2. Cut the pumpkin in manageable size pieces.  I cut mine in half.  Actually my husband was very helpful and cut ours in half since they can be quite tough before they are cooked.  Think sweet potatoes except like 15 times as big. 
3. Scoop out all the gunk from the inside.  At this point you can separate the seeds and roast them if you would like.  I also took great care to remove most of the stringy grossness as I thought that this would help with the pureeing part later. 
4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil and bake on 350 for anywhere from 45 to 60 minutes.  The skin of the pumpkin will get brown but don't worry - this will just add more flavor to your puree.  You are looking for the flesh of the pumpkin to be easily penetrated with a fork, knife, etc. 
5. Once the pumpkin is done, remove from the oven and allow them to cool enough to where you can handle them.  The pumpkin will feel just short of 4 billion degrees at this point and I have burned myself multiple times trying to rush this step.  Normally I wait 10-15 minutes because I still want it to be warm but you could allow the pumpkins to completely cool and still be fine. 
6. Scoop out all the flesh of the pumpkins into a food processor and puree until smooth.  This will not take that long to get it smooth but you will need multiple batches. 
7. **This step might not be necessary depending on your pumpkin or what you will be cooking.**  Pumpkins by nature are watery.  Once ours were pureed we put them in a strainer or a cheesecloth and drained off a lot of liquid.  I knew that we were going to be baking bread or pies with ours and didn't want too much liquid in either recipe.  You will be amazed at how much liquid you can get from pureed pumpkin. 
8. At this point your pumpkin is ready to be used or frozen.  We used our Food Saver machine and saved them in 2-3 cup bags clearly marked with the date and the amount. 

 In following posts I will share some of our favorite recipes using this pumpkin.  In my opinion, this is the ONLY way to go now that I have cooked with this pumpkin.  I think that you can definitely tell the difference between cooking your own pumpkin and the pumpkin in a can.