The Great Pumpkin Bread Recipe Is Here
There’s no other way to say this, but this pumpkin bread is moist. (DEAL WITH IT.) It’s even moister—which isn’t a word—the day after baking. No one wants a dry pumpkin bread, a mouthful of over-spiced regret, and no one certainly wants a mushy loaf, a soggy forkful of fall’s failings. We want a moist loaf. M-O-I-S-T. Find out what it means to me.
It means a lot. And to Molly Baz too. She developed this new recipe and didn’t want a typical vegetable oil quick bread. “Let’s resurrect the pumpkin bread from its sad sorry Starbucks state!” She declared. Okay!!!!
Olive oil brings a buttery, barely grassy note that goes well with pumpkin (“because pumpkin...comes from the earth,” she told me to which I replied 🤔) and it’s what makes the bread moist but never mushy. Molly played with the ratio of flour to fat for weeks until she reached perfection. And since I tasted it, I can concur. Perfection.
What else is inside this thing? A heaping dose of AUTUMNAL FLAVOR, that’s what! Cinnamon, nutmeg, a pinch of clove. This specific canned pumpkin. And fresh ginger, not the dry powder stuff. “I didn’t use pumpkin spice mix because I don’t believe in all the spices in that blend,” said Molly. She doesn’t believe in ground ginger. “People use ⅛ teaspoon a year and then it gets stale and flat in their pantry. Use fresh!” It brings a spicier, more dynamic flavor.
On top we’ve got a rooftop of crunchy pumpkin seeds and sugar to make the whole thing shimmer in the evening moonlight. “Basic b*tches love glitter and so do I, let’s be honest,” said Molly.
Don’t forget the side dish of whipped maple butter, light and airy and just a bit salty. It’s best made with an electric mixer, but you can paddle the maple syrup into room temperature butter with a spatula if you can’t be bothered. It won’t be as fluffy, but you’ll have maple butter. There are worse things.
“If I’m not picking apples this weekend,” Molly concluded, “I’ll be making pumpkin bread, and I hope the rest of the world is too.”
