Pumpkin Bread Head
Getting ready to make Macrina Bakery's famous 'Fall Harvest Squash Loaf'
My favorite time of the year is the day after Halloween, rolling into Thanksgiving. That’s the one holiday I don’t mind, because it means all you can eat turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy.
Growing up and visiting my paternal grandparents in Bridgeport, CT every Thanksgiving, I was known as “The Gravy Girl.” I’d pour it on everything. For once, dad wouldn’t throw a fit about me making a mash out of my individual piles of food, like he does with the way I’d cover his dry scrambled eggs with ketchup and Tobasco.
I would sit at the table in the middle of grandma’s kitchen and just watch her prepare the food. She was my own personal cooking show — way better than Graham Kerr and Julia Child. One time, she slipped on a wet spot and went flying, landing on her considerable rear-end, trying to make me a late-night turkey sandwich with gobs of real butter — the kind that tore the Wonder bread apart.
I didn’t know whether to laugh with delight or rush to her side in horror. I did both. That’s the kinda kid I was.
Autumn also means cooler weather, colorful falling leaves, slate-blue skies dusted with creamy clouds, and my famous pumpkin bread.
I’m roasting a Cinderella pumpkin right now for my Macrina Bakery “Fall Harvest Squash Loaf.” It’s always a huge hit with family and friends, and more than my fair share of passing strangers. The recipe conveniently uses up two cups of pumpkin or any squash puree for two loaves.
Pumpkin also makes a great snack for our dog Bungee. It’s the only thing that keeps his stools firm. He likes his with honey. Who wouldn’t?
Earlier today, I went to Bluerock Farm Market to pick up two more specialty pumpkins for the job. Maybe I’ll return the week before Thanksgiving to see if I can’t score myself a deal. After Halloween, nobody but the most diehard home bakers wants to see another pumpkin.
Pumpkins are for more than carving and feeding livestock, you know.
Cinderella pumpkins have pretty light-orange, but watery flesh. Hubbards (pale blue-green) and some white ones are deep orange-red, thicker, and heartier. I actually prefer those, not those small, stringy pie pumpkins.
(Yes, you can eat them raw. I do.)
Lots of home bakers like to experiment with pumpkin, sneaking them into pasta, bagel, and sourdough for extra color and nutrition.
The biggest pain in the ass for me is roasting the pumpkins for the pumpkin bread. I have to schedule them out to one roasting a day, or I’ll go insane.
I can no longer cut them open either, due to my weak, finger-locking hands. So I get my husband to do it. Then, there’s the tricky matter of pulling and carving out the seeds. I’ve tried to roast those, too, but they never come out right.
I did find a neat way to roast pumpkins, c/o The Kitchn. Simply cut in wedges, oil, and place skin side down and upright, and for only 35-40 min. (30-35 for Cinderellas) in the oven, let cool before peeling and processing.
Before, I would just cut them in half or thirds, oiled, and face down, cover with tin foil and blast-tung for 475 degrees F. for over an hour. Even then, depending on the pumpkin, they’d take forever to bake through.
I will bring pumpkin bread to my friends from bible study, leave some for my son when he house-/dog-sits, and other people I rarely interact with — my dental hygienist, my Sleep Number friend, the CPAP supply ladies… They freeze well, too.
For me, that’s fall.
How was your Halloween?
We spent ours inside, lights out, puttering around, and working.
I finished the awful k-drama web toon adaptation, “Sweet Home,” in its third and final season (thank god) on Netflix, while eating apple cider donuts that arrived earlier in the day from Amazon (it was okay, kinda Hostess powdered donut mushy) and a slice of my experimental sourdough discard sandwich bread with a gochujang and scallion inclusion (a little dry and weird, still getting over a kim chee ingredient in my bread).
“Sweet Home’s” late-comer, Sergeant Tak In-Hwan, played by veteran character actor Yu Oh-Seong (“Welcome to Samdal-ri,” “Champion”), saved the show toward the end with actual emotions fit for the life and death occasion. Otherwise, who cares?
I also checked on two friends who aren’t doing well, for different reasons. One of them is finishing up on chemo, so her doctors can remove a hopefully shrunken, not-metastasized tumor growing out of her pancreas. She’s barely holding on, even with the help of Jesus.
I felt like I should’ve enjoying the festivities more. I don’t have much more of them left.
If I’m allowed to see another Halloween, maybe I’ll make a truce by giving away full-sized Hershey bars to trick or treaters — my barking dog be damned. That’s what I wanted as a kid.
I love the look on their faces when they realize they’ve hit the mother lode in trick or treating’s past.