Yeasted Pumpkin Bread

[BakerAunt]

Stella Parks has an interesting yeasted pumpkin bread recipe at Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2018/10/how-to-make-a-pumpkin-loaf.html

She says that you must use a food processor, but I'm pretty sure that my food processor (30+ years and not that large) would not be able to handle it. I might try it in my 7-qt. Cuisinart stand mixer. I note that she is picky about the yeast, although I've not had any issues with active dry yeast. She is also doing the roll-up shaping. I've stopped doing that, unless I have a filling. Instead, I make an oval, let it rest for 5 minutes, then fold the oval over, seal the edges, flatten, and repeat, except the second time, I do not flatten, but roll into a cylinder, making sure that the seam is sealed on the bottom. I have much less of a problem with "blow outs," when I shape this way.

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• This topic was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by BakerAunt.

[skeptic7]

It looks a little overly complicated for a simple loaf of bread even with pumpkin added. I am still going on the "knead until you get bored, wait 5 minutes and then knead some more" I have had fairly good bread that didn't window pane

[RiversideLen]

That looks very interesting, BakerAunt. I'm going to give it a try. My food processor isn't large enough so I will do it with my KA stand mixer. The stand mixer will simply take longer then the food processor.

[BakerAunt]

Today, I made this bread, using puree from a pumpkin that I roasted this afternoon. I used my stand mixer, and I substituted in 1 ¼ cups whole wheat flour, added 2 Tbs. flax meal, and added 2 Tbs. special dried milk. (The milk is because I’m working to get more calcium in my diet.) I used grapeseed oil rather than butter, and I weighed my ingredients. I also used table salt (so, as she specifies, I used half of the Diamond Crystal kosher salt), and I used active dry yeast, which I proofed in the puree with a bit of sugar. I found that kneading it in my Cuisinart stand mixer for 5 minutes at speed 3 was perfect. The first rise took only 55 minutes, and the second rise 45 min., even though the temperature in my house was about 70F. I did a pre-shape and waited 5 minutes before final shaping and putting the dough in the pan. I wondered about the 8x4 inch pan size, but it worked perfectly and made a beautiful, high-rising loaf.

Skeptic is correct that Stella Parks makes the recipe fussier than it need be. Len is correct in that the stand mixer does the job.

I'll add a note to this post tomorrow about taste and crumb.

[BakerAunt]

The bread is slightly sweet, with a lovely light orange color. Texture is excellent. I will definitely bake it again, using my adjustments, perhaps with some additional whole wheat flour substitution.

[BakerAunt]

I decided to try the recipe with honey rather than maple syrup. The original maple recipe is wonderful on its own, or with a chicken or ham filling, but it is not what would be wanted for tuna fish or peanut butter.

I used 2 Tbs. honey and an extra 1 Tbs. of water. It perhaps could have used an additional tsp., but it still came out well. I increased the whole wheat flour to 1 1/2 cups (making up the rest of the weight with bread flour), increased the flax meal to 3 Tbs. and again added 2 Tbs. special dried milk. I used canola oil this time, rather than grapeseed oil.

The bread came out beautifully, with the same high rise. It has a stronger pumpkin flavor, but that is probably due to the white pumpkin puree I used. This loaf will work well for sandwiches with strong fillings where the maple would be lost or would clash with it.

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