All right. The cupcakes are done. Here's a picture of one, even (they're full size by the way, just being held by a friend's enormous hand). I'll share the recipe and talk about them tomorrow. But right now, I'm eating the whole wheat pumpkin bread we made yesterday and am reminded how much I adore this recipe from "have cake will travel."
I've made this a lot. Bread is one of the few things that both my wild monkeys will deign to eat (though one only as toast or a sandwich, one only with butter and untoasted), so I tend to pay a bit of attention to it. In the summer, we get Gerard's bread with our CSA share from the Intervale. The rest of the year we're on our own and I like to make our own good stuff as much as possible. And now that both crazy beasts are old enough to help, it's even a rockin' good family time - for the 6.25 minutes that I can capture their attention.
So yesterday when I got home from yet another grocery store trip to discover that I hadn't bought bread (but at least I had had the sense to backtrack for the milk I missed before we checked out the first time), we scrubbed up and got to work. As I was tossing ingredients on the counter, I discovered that I only had half the squash puree in the fridge that I had thought. Rather than making only one loaf (I always double), I decided to toss in 3/4 cup of unsweetened applesauce instead.
Another adjustment that I've gotten in the habit of is using 2/3 whole wheat white flour, and 1/3 unbleached white. The bread is great both ways, but I like the slightly lighter version that you get if you use some white flour.
For some reason, this time it just didn't rise quite as well as usual. I'm sure I should have done the oven-on-f0r-one-minute trick to get it off to a nice warm start, but I didn't. So I gave it a good long time rising, and it eventually came out of the oven looking great - not as golden as when made with all the suggested pumpkin, but a nice color anyway.
And sitting here eating the bread abandoned by the monkeyboys as they've scurried off to their day, I must admit it tastes as good as ever.
Do you really use vital wheat gluten when you make the pumpkin bread? If you say yes I might grumble about having to go to the store, but I did just pull 2 loaves of our standard bread out of the oven so I will probably be going to the store before I need bread anyway.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry: I do use the wheat gluten. But I've never experimented with using all bread flour, and don't know if its gluten content is enough higher that it might give the right chewiness. If you try it let me know!
ReplyDeleteLove the blog, Cheryl! I'm going to add a link to it on mine. Would be fun to cook with you someday - maybe a fun baking activity with the kidlets?
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