Baking pumpkin bread is easy. You might not have done so good with baking bread lately. I want to show you how to get out of the way of the most common mistakes and set you up for your first and definitely not last perfect loaf of pumpkin bread.
1. Wrong Type Of Pumpkin For Your Bread Recipe
If you are buying a pumpkin for baking pumpkin bread or to prepare it for any other food, you should be able to try it first. Pumpkins are going off easily and fast. A pumpkin should not be older than a week, when you are about to prepare it for further use. To make sure, that your pumpkin is still ok, try a piece of it. If its taste is sweet as it is supposed to, you are good to continue with this pumpkin.
Before you start to experiment with different types of pumpkin, you should stick to the most common one. There are not only huge differences in taste, you also may buy a pumpkin that is not 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 as tasty, but it is, and canned pumpkins are very useful for baking bread, because you wont necessarily have to cook them like fresh pumpkin.
2. Wrong Pumpkin Bread Recipe
Obviously you can have bad luck with your recipe. But you do not 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 not modify it unless you are a professional. Read why in point 3.
3. Bad Mixture Of Ingredients
Since most people have no idea which effect each ingredient has on the dough of pumpkin bread, you can easily head into the wrong direction. You might want to have your pumpkin bread a bit sweeter than usual, so you put more sugar in it, right? But what is salt doing to your bread? See?
Now in addition to what a single ingredient does to your dough, you have to see everything in relation as well. The amount of baking powder depends on the amount of this, the amount of salt on the amount of that. I will tell you everything in another article, but for now, stick to your recipe and buy a digital weighing machine. Halloween is knocking on our door, so there really is not that much time left to learn a handcraft!
Another wrong opinion is, that the order in which you put together the ingredients of your pumpkin bread recipe is not important. It is. Trust me. Your chosen recipe will lead you the right way anyways. So once more, stick to it!
4. Leaving Pumpkin Bread In The Oven For Too Long
Yes this happens to everybody. But it actually is pretty easy. Every oven is different and you cannot rely on what the recipe says about how long a pumpkin bread needs to stay in there. Set up an alarm clock 5 up to 10 minutes before the bread is supposed to be done. Then stick a knife through the pumpkin bread and see if it comes out clean. If so, congratulations, your bread is done, even though it was not supposed to be. If not, well, leave it in there for a little bit longer.
5. Do NOT Throw It In The Garbage
I mean seriously, please do not throw bread away what you have made with your own hands. Quick breads like pumpkin bread, especially the sweeter ones, are predestined for the fridge. They freeze well! So if you already know that your chosen recipe suits you and your taste, double it and bake a second or even third loaf of pumpkin bread for your upright freezer.