Use it!

So, you dutifully saved the flesh from your carving pumpkin and now have all these containers with pumpkin puree and no idea what to do with it?

Why not bake (one of) these lovely loafs this weekend?

One of them is a no-knead bread, which is wonderfully easy and turns out nice and airy, with a perfectly crunchy crust. It does need a lot of time to rise to perfection though, so this one needs to be planned one day ahead.

The other one is a richly filled more cake-like bread. Think tea-loaf without the tea. And with pumpkin. And lots of other good things. It’s an easy stir-up, which can be adjusted to your own taste (and current pantry contents).

For the NO-KNEAD PUMPKIN BREAD you’ll need:

• 450 gr flour
• 325 ml water
• 175 gr pumpkin puree
• 12 gr salt
• 3 gr dry yeast (yes, 3 is really enough here)
• (pumpkin) seeds

• mixing bowl, baking parchment (yup, unfortunately a reusable silicone sheet won’t do this time), an oven-proof pot with lid.

And all you have to do is:

1. Stir together in a big bowl flour, water, pumpkin, salt and yeast.
   Keep stirring until no more flour is visible, but no longer.
   Depending on the moisture of your pumpkin, you may want to add a bit of water or flour, it should stick together nicely.
2. Cover and leave to prove for a minimum of 10 hours, but preferably about 15.
3. With wet hands, peel dough from the sides of the bowl and fold towards the middle. Repeat about six times, varying in direction.
4. Place your dough -it will be very wet, more like a batter than a dough- on a piece of baking parchment and put the mixing bowl on top over it. Leave to prove like this for another 2 hours.
5. Pre-heat your oven to 220˚C, with the pot in it. For the best results, leave the pot to heat a bit longer, up to an hour.
6. When your pot is hot throughout, take it out of the oven, and lift the baking parchment with the dough into it. Toss over seeds as desired, and carve dough through the middle. Cover with the lid and bake in the oven for 30 minutes.
7. Remove lid and bake for another 30 minutes.

For the RICHLY FILLED PUMPKIN LOAF:

• 175 gr self-rising flour
• 250 gr pumpkin puree
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp mixed spice
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1 pear
• 1 small apple (or half a bigger one)
• 8 chopped up dried dates
• A handful of chopped up pecan nuts
• mixing bowl, loaf tin, oil/butter for greasing

You can easily swap nuts and dried fruits to your own liking.
This just happened to be what I had at hand this time and it turned out to everyone’s liking here.

1. Preheat your oven to 180˚C and grease a loaf tin.
2. Mix all your ingredients together in a bowl and tip into the tin.
3. Bake in the oven for about 50 minutes, or until set throughout.

Try and be patient.
I know it’s hard but if you try to cut this loaf while still hot, it will fall apart and crumble like crazy. It will still taste good, so go ahead and dive right in if no one is watching. But if you want to be able to slice it properly and have it look like something, leave it to cool (almost) completely.

Still pumpkin puree left over?

We also have the recipes for pumpkin pancakes and mugcakes online!