Here for you a yummy recipe to prepare an amazing pumpkin bread! Perfect for important occasions but it is also delicious as a bread for every day. It is prepared with a long rising time that increases its digestibility and is enriched with cardamom seeds, that give a spicy taste and protects the digestive processes, and with pumpkin seeds, anti-inflammatory. And the pumpkin bread is also cheerful and colorful, so scented and tasty that no crumbs will be left, for sure!
Ingredients for the bread starter
150 g of white wheat flour
150 g of white spelt flour
300 g of water
10 g of fresh brewer’s yeast
1 teaspoon of honey or barley malt
Ingredients for the dough
300 g of semi-whole grain spelt flour
200 g of whole grain spelt flour
450 g of pumpkin pulp
1 teaspoon of crushed cardamom seeds
40 g of water
40 g of extra virgin olive oil
Pumpkin seeds
Sea salt
Begin with the bread starter. Let the yeast melt in a glass of lukewarm water taken from the total, 300 grams. Add also the honey, that may be replaced with the barley malt. Pour the yeast on the two flours placed in a bowl and mix. Add also the rest of the water and go on stirring, then, cover the bread starter with a cloth. Let it rise in a cold room, the temperature should be about 10°C, for example it may be an outer corridor or a basement, for about 13 hours. After this time steam the pumpkin pulp, and when it is soft, crush it with a fork. Add now to the bread starter also the ingredients of the dough, namely 40 g of water, the extra virgin olive oil, 500 g of flour mixed with a handful of crushed cardamom seeds and the pumpkin pulp. Don’t add the salt and the pumpkin seeds. Knead the dough and let it rest for an hour in a warm place at the temperature of about 27-28°C, such as the oven. After this time take the dough and add a tablespoon of fine ground sea salt, let the bread rest for 30 minutes, still in a warm place. Now divide the bread into 2-3 hoagie roll breads, or, and this is really a nice idea, into a lot of small breads that you can use to create a particular form with a cake mold, for example a star or a heart, perfect for Christmas. Put the breads on a baking pan covered with baking paper and decorate with the pumpkin seeds, let rest for an hour, then spread a little water and put into the oven. If you like the idea to create a form with your small breads, before placing the bread into the oven put the breads in the form you have chosen. In any case, the procedure is to bake the bread in the oven at 200° for 10 minutes and then at 180° for 30 minutes, but control the baking when there are 10 minutes left from the end.
