Pumpkin Bread

…yes, I know, pumpkin bread is out of season for June.  I’ve been cleaning out my freezer lately, and found some frozen leftover pumpkin puree that I had used part of in this recipe.  It was still good from January, so I thawed it out and used it to make a quick bread.  It ended up making 3 loaves total–two regular-sized and one mini loaf.  So, I’ve now put the other two loaves in the freezer as I use this one.  Freezer cleanout fail.  But, recipe win!

I got this recipe from my edition of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book (2006).  They provide a rather extensive list of different loaf sizes and cooking times, but I’m only including here the baking time that I used for my 2 regular sized loaf pans (approx. 9×4) and one mini loaf pan.  The mini pan took about half the baking time than the regular sizes.

Pumpkin Bread (p. 132 in Better Homes and Gardens 2006 ed.)

3 cups sugar

1 cup oil

4 eggs

3 1/3 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 ½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. nutmeg

2/3 cup water

1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease bottom and ½ inch up the sides of 2+ loaf pans.  Beat sugar and oil, add eggs.  Alternately add dry ingredients and water to sugar mixture.  Beat in pumpkin.  Bake 50-55 minutes.  Cool in pans 10 minutes (at least), remove from pans, cool completely before slicing.

The recipe doesn’t call for it, but next time I’d add toasted chopped nuts, such as pecans or walnuts, to the batter.  Also, I say “at least” 10 minutes for cooling because these loaves are heavy and very fragile, since they’re so soft.  Quite different from what I’m used to when making banana nut bread.  I took one out of the pan a bit soon, and inverted it to take it out, but it ended up breaking apart–so be careful when you remove them from the pan.  If they’re too hot, they’ll tear into pieces.

I found that the bread worked out better in the small loaf pans instead of the regular size pans.  Because it’s such a dense and heavy loaf, but also a fragile loaf, it’s easier to manage in small loaves and slices than large ones.  So I’d definitely choose to bake this in my small loaf pans and end up with half a dozen loaves than use my regular size pans and have only two loaves.

This, in all, was pretty good for a pumpkin bread.  It had the right level of spice, and the texture was soft and moist.  I think I’d try it again, and possibly add nuts and dried cranberries like in this recipe.