Sourdough Pumpkin Bread

It is October already, and the heat is still dragging on. The seasons are turning somewhere, though — you can see it in what appears in the vegetable aisle. Halloween is nearly here, so this time I want to bake with pumpkin. And since we are at it, to shape the loaf so it looks a little like one too.

Step 1 — Making the pumpkin purée

First, the purée that goes into the dough. Once the seeds and fibres are out, pumpkin is fine-textured; steaming it and running it through a blender is all it needs. Boiling makes it watery, and I dislike microwaves — in fact I do not own one — so steaming it is.

Ingredients:

• Pumpkin100g

1. Scoop out the seeds, cut the pumpkin into 3–5cm pieces, peel them and arrange them in a steamer. Ten to fifteen minutes should do it; a bamboo skewer should slide straight in.

2. Blend until you have a smooth purée.

About the quantity: steamed pumpkin holds a good deal of water. Compared with the feel of flour and water, I would guess it is at least 50% water. As a rule I find bread rises reliably as long as the ratio of bread flour to additions is about 4:1, which suggested that up to 50g of pumpkin solids would be safe. So 100g of purée it is.

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Step 2 — Making the dough

There are several ways to build the dough for a pumpkin loaf. You can use powdered pumpkin flakes with the bread flour, or make the dough with bread flour alone and work the purée in afterwards. This time I mixed the purée in from the start. The stretch and fold and everything after are almost identical to the Basic Sourdough Bread: A Step-by-Step Recipe.

Ingredients:

• Bread flour (Kitanokaori)200g
• Pumpkin purée100g
• Starter (bread flour)60g
• Water120cc
• Salt4g
• Nutmeg and cinnamon, a pinch of each

Mixing the water, pumpkin purée, starter and salt

1. On the water: I am assuming that half of the 100g of purée — 50g — is water, so I use 50cc less than the 170cc I would normally use for a sourdough loaf.

Dissolve 4g of salt thoroughly in 120cc of water. Add 100g of pumpkin purée and stir until it dissolves; you will end up with a lovely orange liquid. If any large pieces of pumpkin remain, crush them properly with your hands. Next add 60g of starter and stir until that dissolves too. Once the water, salt, purée and starter are fully combined, add 200g of bread flour. Start with the scraper, turning the flour up from the bottom of the bowl. Once it is roughly combined, use your hands to bring it together into a single mass.

2. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes to an hour. You are not building gluten by kneading; you are building it by waiting.

Stretch and fold

3. The first stretch and fold. It is exactly what it sounds like: stretch, then fold. Working around the round of dough, stretch and fold it roughly six to eight times. Not kneading — stretching gently and folding. That is the point.

4. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for one to two hours.

5. The second stretch and fold. The dough has begun to rise, so work more gently than the first time to avoid knocking the air out of it. This time, four to six stretches and folds.

6. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for two to three hours.

Shaping the dough

7. Using the scraper, ease the dough gently out of the bowl onto a floured surface. Flatten it lightly into a rough square, fold it in from all four sides, shape it loosely, and let it rest for 30 to 60 minutes.

8. Finally, stretch and fold about four more times to build tension across the surface, and shape it into an oval. Dust the top with flour and place it in a cloth-lined banneton — a round basket or a bowl works too — turning it over so the floured surface sits at the bottom.

9. The final proof. About six hours in the fridge should roughly double it. Press the dough lightly with the pad of a finger: if it springs back with some tension, it is ready.

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Step 3 — Baking

What you need:

• Dutch oven (220mm internal diameter, 100mm deep)
• Kitchen twine
• Baking paper
• Razor blade

1. Put the Dutch oven in the oven and preheat to 250°C.

2. Once the oven is up to temperature, lay the twine over the dough while it is still in the basket, dividing it into eight.

3. Turn the basket over onto the baking paper and tie the twine.

4. Cut a pattern into the surface with the razor.

5. Take out the Dutch oven, lower the dough in on its paper, put the lid on, and bake at 230°C for 20 minutes.

6. Take the lid off and bake at 240°C for a further 10 minutes.

7. If you pull the Dutch oven straight out of the oven, the sudden change in temperature will collapse the loaf. Leave it inside the oven for about ten minutes. And once you do take the Dutch oven out, leave the loaf sitting inside it for a while longer.

8. Finally, push a cinnamon stick into the centre of the loaf. It makes it look considerably more like a pumpkin.

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Notes on baking a pumpkin loaf

Baking these a few times this autumn taught me something. The first one looked wonderful coming out of the oven — well risen, the score split cleanly, the edge standing proud. But once it had been out for a while and cooled, the whole thing sighed and sank. What is going on there? I am not entirely sure, but I have heard the same about pound cakes made with whole grains: enormous straight out of the oven, deflated an hour later.

So, as in the recipe above, I found that leaving it in the oven for a while after baking and letting the temperature come down gradually keeps the rise.

As for the taste — crisp and fragrant outside, soft and chewy inside, with the pumpkin coming through clearly. A good loaf. I used cinnamon and nutmeg this time, but cumin or cardamom would make a more grown-up version. Or the other way: honey or apple for something sweeter. It set off a lot of ideas.

Do try an autumn sourdough of your own.