Baking pumpkin bread is easy. You may not have been doing so well baking bread lately. I want to show you how to avoid the most common mistakes and prepare yourself for your first and definitely not last loaf of perfect pumpkin bread.
1. Wrong Kind of Pumpkin for Your Bread Recipe
If you are buying a pumpkin to bake pumpkin bread or to prepare for any other food, you should be able to taste it first. Pumpkins go off easy and fast. A pumpkin should not be more than a week old, when you are about to prepare it for later use. To make sure your pumpkin is still good, try a piece of it. If it tastes sweet like it’s supposed to be, you’re good to go with this squash.
Before you start experimenting with different types of pumpkin, you should stick to the most common one. Not only are there vast differences in taste, you can also buy a pumpkin that isn’t necessarily recommended to eat. Ornamental gourds are on the market everywhere. You should never eat one of those. It may sound like common sense, but its ingredients can be toxic.
Tip: It might not sound all that tasty, but it is, and canned pumpkins come in handy for baking bread, because you won’t necessarily have to cook them like fresh pumpkins.
2. Wrong Pumpkin Bread Recipe
Obviously you may have bad luck with your recipe. But you don’t have to. The Internet offers many websites full of recipes that are rated by thousands of people who have tried all those recipes.
Another very important thing is that you should stick to the recipe and do not modify it unless you are a professional. Read why in point 3.
3. Poor mix of ingredients
Since most people have no idea what effect each ingredient has in pumpkin bread dough, it can easily lead you in the wrong direction. You might want your pumpkin bread to be a little sweeter than usual, so you put more sugar in it, right? But what does salt do to your bread? Watch?
Now, in addition to what a single ingredient does to your dough, you also need to see everything in relation to it. The amount of baking powder depends on the amount of this, the amount of salt on the amount of that. I’ll tell you all about it in another article, but for now, stick to your recipe and buy a digital scale. Halloween is knocking on our door, so there really isn’t much time left to learn a craft!
Another misconception is that the order in which you put the ingredients in your pumpkin bread recipe is not important. This. Trust me. Your chosen recipe will lead you on the right path anyway. So once again, stand your ground!
4. Leaving pumpkin bread in the oven for too long.
Yes, this happens to everyone. But it’s actually quite easy. Every oven is different and you can’t rely on what the recipe says about how long a pumpkin loaf should sit in there. Set an alarm clock for 5-10 minutes before the bread is supposed to be ready. Then stick a knife into the pumpkin bread and see if it comes out clean. If so, congratulations, your bread is ready, even though it wasn’t supposed to be. If not, well, leave it there for a little while longer.
5. DO NOT throw it away
I’m serious, please don’t throw away the bread you’ve made with your own hands. Quick breads like pumpkin, especially the sweetest ones, are predestined for the fridge. They freeze well! So if you already know that the recipe you chose suits you and your taste, double it and bake a second or even a third loaf of pumpkin bread for your upright freezer.