Savory Pumpkin Bread with Ingredients from the Garden

I love pumkins! They are relatively easy to grow, delicious and surprisingly versitile. There are hundreds of varieties of pumkins in the world and most can be used for desserts as well as savory dishes.

This year I grew a dozen or so of these types of pumkins. Here they are called zapallos brasileños and are super orange and creamy inside. They are great in stews and other vegetable-based dishes.

Stews, however, aren't a very portable food and I needed something to bring to provide sustanance to a work day on our land. I decided to make a nutrient dense pumpkin bread!

The recipe is simple ~ the night before I steamed an entire pumkin without the seeds. Once cooled I used half of the pumkin, scooping out the interior creamy flesh and mashed it up while slowly adding 3 cups of whole wheat flour with just a bit of water.

I let this dough sit for a bit while preparing a bit of yeast in warm water with a spoonful of brown sugar. At this point you could add a sourdough starter instead of the industrial yeast. I then mixed the dough throroughly.

And let it sit in a warm spot with a lid of for about 6 hours though less would have been alright. By evening the dough had doubled in size thanks to the yeast. I preheated the toaster oven and prepared my glass bread dish with a layer of butter. The bread baked for 35 minutes then cooled all night. The next morning I prepared sandwiches with cheese, ham, and a salad of veggies from the garden