Mom’s Pumpkin Bread

Vegetarian & Vegan, Breakfast & Brunch
The 70’s were a funny time food wise. As a pseudo-hippy kid, making bread out of pumpkin seemed revolutionary and wild until I heard of zucchini bread. The only time we had pumpkin was in pie at Thanksgiving and I hated it. My mother would bake this bread fairly often and all the other ingredients masked the nasty flavor of canned pumpkin that I still loathe today.One Christmas we baked them as gifts in old coffee cans, as you did back then. It was our way of recycling and being environmentally conscious. If you make this, use roasted or steamed sugar pumpkin, butternut squash, calabaza or another dense pumpkin as the base. It’s worth the extra work.
Mom’s Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients

  • 3 1/3 cups ( 1 pound, 3 ounces) whole wheat flour
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups pumpkin purée
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 300 °.
  2. Grease and flour two 9’ x 4 1/2” loaf pans.
  3. In a large bowl, mix together whole-wheat flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and set aside.
  4. In a medium-sized bowl, beat eggs with oil until smooth, then add the pumpkin .
  5. Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients until just incorporated. Do not over mix.
  6. Pour into prepared pans.
  7. Bake for one hour, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Total time:
Yield: 2 loaves

Notes

Use roasted or steamed sugar pumpkin, butternut squash, calabaza or another dense pumpkin as the base. It’s worth the extra work.

If you want make it fancier, add chopped walnuts or pecans, pumpkin seeds, raisins and-or cranberries or any other dried fruit you like. The pseudo hippies would’ve have put sunflower seeds in it. Today’s modern hippy with no doubt add flax or chia seeds. If you do add nuts or fruit remember to sprinkle some on top to make it more attractive.

You can bake this recipe into coffee cans, muffin tins, ramekins or any shape you want.