Pumpkin Bread

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There are few things I like more than the scents of fall. From the smell of the fallen leaves to the pumpkin and cinnamon that tend to fill my house. It’s really a wonderful time for the senses as well as the eyes. In an effort to use up some of our old canned pumpkin, I decided to try out some new recipes. Let’s face it, we can’t eat pumpkin pie all day every day and there are plenty of other things that make my house smell just as good. One of them being this pumpkin bread recipe.

The Original Recipe

The original recipe for this comes from Sue Sobol. If you know Sue, tell her thank you for submitting this old recipe. I’m happy to report that it is a favorite around our home and will be used for, God willing, generations to come. Should we ever get past our infertility battles and have kids, I look forward to being able to bake a lot of bread with them- including this one.

Ingredients

• ⅔ cup shortening
• 2 ⅔ cup sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 lb can pumpkin
• ⅔ cup water
• 3 ⅓ cup flour
• 2 tsp soda
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cloves
• ⅔ cup nuts
• ⅔ cup raisins

Pumpkin Bread Directions

Cream shortening, sugar, and eggs.

Mix in pumpkin and water. 

Add remaining ingredients, mix well.

Add nuts and raisins.

Bake in 350 oven for 70 minutes.

Makes 2 (9x5x3) loaves.

Tips & Tricks

In the recipe card below you will see that I took some of the sugar out. Per usual, we found that the original recipe was a little too sweet for our liking. I’ve explained it a lot but we always try to cut back on sugar wherever we can. As a population, the US definitely eats too much sugar. We put it in everything! Which is why when I can, I try to limit or omit it. 

I also don’t usually put nuts or raisins in our loaves. My husband would probably care less to be honest and would love it either way. For my own preference, I choose not to put them in. If anything, I’ll throw in the raisins. It definitely seems like they use to eat a lot more nuts in things in the past than we do today. Plus, I’m genuinely not sure what nuts to put in this bread. My first thought is pecans and we don’t usually keep those on hand. I think it’s just a sign of the times. 

The other thing that you can do is soak your raisins overnight or for an hour to add some moisture to them. I really like to do this when I’m putting them in bread to make them more flavorful and more soft. To me, If there is a hard raisin in a piece of bread it’s just not that desirable. However, the soaked raisins will give them a little more flavor and make them squishy so that they don’t stand out nearly as much as just plain raisins.

In Summary: Pumpkin Bread

This pumpkin bread is the perfect fall treat. Slather it in some butter when it’s fresh out of the oven and you will taste, what I believe, is a little bit of heaven. It’s so wonderfully flavored and rich that it can be eaten as a treat or even just for breakfast. I’m so glad that I preserved more pumpkin this year than I did last year. The other thing that I love about this recipe is that it makes two loaves. Honestly, the first will fly off your counter so fast you won’t even hardly taste it. The second one might last a day or two! 

What is your favorite pumpkin baked good? 

I say we can’t eat it every day but I do really enjoy some pumpkin pie. We eat it crustless throughout the year as a low carb dessert though and that makes me feel a little better about eating it more often.