Pumpkin Muffins & Bread

It’s that time of year for baking with pumpkin and squash! I bought a pumpkin squash, baked it, and made not only pumpkin muffins but some pumpkin bread, all in one sitting. It’s great to eat the muffins right away and freeze the pumpkin bread for later, give to a friend, or take to a pot luck dinner.

(By the way, I cheat and use any squash that has bright orange, mealy flesh, the kind that bakes up thick and creamy instead of watery and stringy)

One dozen Pumpkin muffins and a loaf of Pumpkin Bread:

Printable Recipe

Make the crumb mixture first:

In a small mixing bowl add:

113 g white sugar
113 g of salted butter
170 g all purpose flour

Using your hands rub the butter into the mixture until the mixture is crumbly and when you squeeze it gently it sticks together making larger crumbs.

Mix together in a large mixing bowl:

250 g sourdough starter @ 100% hydration
200 g Orange juice (if you make it from concentrate, keep it on the rich side)
110 g oil (I used a light olive oil)
100 g milk
219 g eggs (three large eggs)
200 g dark brown sugar
300 g pumpkin puree
17 g salt

In another bowl mix together:

570 g all purpose flour ( I left out 60 g of flour and used 25 g of flax seed meal and 35 g of almond flour)
9 g baking soda
15 g baking powder
12 g cinnamon
6 g ginger
2 g nutmeg

Add the dry ingredient bowl to the wet ingredient bowl and mix just until blended. You don’t want to over mix.

Using a standard muffin pan, oil the pan and then fill the cups to the top. Spoon some crumb mixture onto each muffin and push it gently using poking pressure from your finger tips.

Bake the muffins at 400F for about 20-25 minutes, just until a toothpick pulls out clean. Don’t over bake. When you get crumbs all over from taking them out of the pan, don’t worry, they somehow disappear of their own accord….

So moist and delicious!

Pumpkin Bread:

Once you are done filling and topping the muffins, add 140 g of coarsely chopped walnuts (or pecans) to the remaining batter and then oil and fill a small bread pan.

Use the rest of your crumbs on top of the bread. Using a mixing spoon or spatula, gently push some of the crumbs into the batter all around the top of the bread and down the sides, this helps to make a marbled effect in the bread. If you want, you can start out by putting some crumbs on the bottom before adding the batter or layering the crumbs into the batter and finishing it off with crumbs on top. If you go to all that trouble, you might have to make more crumbs though!