Pumpkin Bread with Odlums Coarse Wholemeal Flour

Checkout the terrain. It’s coarse, it’s wholemeal and it’s delicious.

Ever since March, I’ve noticed an uptick in the presence of brown bread recipes on the internet.  From Saint Patricks Day straight into a quarantine, which resulted in a shortage in both flour and yeast, brown bread has gotten a lot of coverage on the web as an alternative to breads made with all purpose or white bread flour and yeast. I’m loving it because Irish brown bread is SO good and it's finally getting some of the recognition that it deserves! As you may know, I am a huge fan of Odlums Coarse Wholemeal Flour, the stuff that gives brown bread it's indescribable texture and sets it apart from all other breads.  Famous for brown bread, Odlums can be used successfully in so many recipes.  I substitute it one for one in yeasted bread recipes calling for whole wheat flour, and I’ve used it in tart dough, Rachel Allen’s brown scones, waffles, the list goes on. This week I discovered yet another use for this versatile flour - Pumpkin Bread. 

I found some Pumpkin Bread in the freezer the other day. A whole loaf! Despite having a google doc that contains an inventory of the contents of my freezer, I still find surprises in there. Some unrecognizable, some, like this pumpkin bread, happily identifiable.  

A couple of days ago the kids all descended upon me in hot pursuit of breakfast just as I was wrapping up an important project for work.  I felt like a superhero as I popped the pumpkin bread into the microwave to defrost, fed them each a fat slice, and got right back to what I was doing. They too were amazed. Not by my super-powers, but by the sweet glory of pumpkin bread. I’m pretty sure that loaf was from a store-bought mix but it was still pretty good (and I was definitely grateful for its appearance). Now, 80-something days into quarantine, I don’t have pumpkin bread mix in my cupboard, so when Isla requested more pumpkin bread, I had to make one from scratch. 

It never occurred to me to take a photo of it before eating some. #priorities

Feeling sort of guilty for allowing them to eat an entire loaf of pumpkin bread from a mix, likely with an unholy amount of sugar and bleached white flour involved, I decided to try to make one that was a bit more healthy. I’m so lucky to have a good source for Odlums coarse wholemeal flour, yes, the incredible, uniquely textured flour that gives brown bread its je ne sais quoi. I just found out that it’s GREAT for pumpkin bread too. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m so proud of this recipe. I absolutely just threw it together on a wing and a prayer, but somehow it really worked and I would make it again without changing a thing. Thanks to the coarse texture of the flour and the pumpkin, the bread came out both crunchy and moist without the use of much oil, and not too much sugar either, well, if you don’t count the chocolate chips. 

While I was trying to add a little fiber and some vegetables to my kids’ diets, all they wanted was cake. So I put in lots of chocolate chips and knew that I struck the right cord, at least as far as they are concerned, when my two-year old started singing “Happy Birthday” after her first bite. Who cares if they think it’s cake when it’s really pretty good for them? I like the chocolate chips too. Sorry not sorry. 

See? CAKE!

So try this out on your own kiddos, big and small, the Odlums really makes it special so please use it if you can get some. If you are in the Chicago area, Paddy’s is doing curbside sales and they have some! 

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients

2 cups Odlums coarse wholemeal flour

½ tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice or mix of warm spices (e.g. ground cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, allspice etc.)

1 15-oz can pumpkin or butternut squash puree

4 egg yolks (leftover from the frosting on Eve’s birthday cake - you can use 2 whole eggs)

⅓ cup vegetable oil

⅓ cup sugar

⅔ cup brown sugar (I used the equivalent in Truvia for baking, a Stevia product, less sugar!)

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ - 1 cup chocolate chips (optional - dried fruit and/or nuts would also be good)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325F.  

2. Spray an 8’ X 8’ cake pan with cooking spray or grease lightly with oil or butter. 

3. Stir flour, salt, spices, baking soda and baking powder together in a small bowl.

4. In a larger bowl, whisk pumpkin puree, eggs, vanilla, oil and sugars together until smooth.

5. Using a silicone spatula, carefully fold flour mixture into pumpkin mixture until there are no dry streaks of flour remaining.

6. Fold in chocolate chips or other mix-ins if using.

7. Spoon batter into prepared cake pan and smooth top.

8. Bake for approximately 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the bread comes out clean.

Eve's Fourth Birthday

 It’s hard not to feel crushed by the state of the nation right now. I thought the news cycle would have to make room for something besides the Coronavirus eventually, but I didn’t expect it to be anything like this.  It feels heavy. For those of us that are parents, we have been asked to figure out how to homeschool our kids. Now they have pressing inquiries about race. And death. How do we protect them, inform them and help them through a period of time that is so scary for us? Tough stuff.  But, at the end of the day, this is what it means to be a parent. You are a teacher, and you are required to teach the lesson at hand, whatever that may be. 

 Like the parents around me, I have been forced to rise to the occasion. But today, I’m taking a break from teaching tough lessons and enjoying the simple pleasure of Eve’s 4th birthday. Let me tell you, I have never been so excited for a kid's birthday in my life.  Except, of course, for  each of my children’s “0” birthdays, when I was pregnant and simultaneously super excited to meet each of them and also to evict them from my body.  Today is our first quarantine kid’s birthday and it’s been so nice to have it to look forward to.  Eve’s birthday is already my favorite because she’s the only one of my children who was not born in the winter. I hate trying to figure out where to have winter birthday parties, worrying that after all of the planning and excitement leading up, snow will prevent people from coming. I love that a June birthday can (not right now, but usually) be celebrated at the park with friends, pizza and cake, which is just as fun, but not nearly as much work (or money) as most winter alternatives. 

Normally, planning a kid’s party along with all of the other stuff we have going on is sort of exhausting but right now, a birthday is a pleasant diversion from everything on the news, the endless cycle of work, homeschool, cook, clean, work and never being sure what day it is. Not having to plan the logistics of a party is a gift to me, and I deserve it. After all, I carried these babies, pushed them out into this world, stayed up all night with them (and still do sometimes) and have loved them to the max ever since they were each just a little ball of cells.  

We aren’t having an elaborate celebration this week but it feels like a birthday should. We’re celebrating four years of Eve, the funny, sweet happy baby who, unlike her siblings that all think they’re teenagers, remains a baby at heart. Who said to me just yesterday, “When I get as big as you, I’m going to drive the car like you, be a mom like you, and I’m going to sleep in your bed with you!” Haha. 

This little girl has brought me endless hours of joy, millions of hugs and kisses and all the smiles in the world over the last four years. She wants to be an ear doctor when she grows up because whenever she goes to the pediatrician with an ear infection, the doctor makes her feel better. She also wants to be a policeman but not a policeman because she is not going to be a man. So, she wants to be a policeman-woman. I’m sure she can be anything she wants to be. I’m looking forward to all of it. 

She wanted an Elsa cake, of course. We actually have an Elsa doll, but she gave herself an unfortunate quarantine haircut and was a bit too tall for this dress anyway. So we used our tried and true legless dollar store “cake doll”. She has truly taken one for the team and we love her dearly. I wanted this cake to taste amazing so I turned to King Arthur Flour for both the cake and the frosting.  The kids all love chocolate, especially Eve so I knew the cake had to be chocolate. I used this recipe for the cake and this recipe for the frosting. 

 The frosting is Italian buttercream. I favor it over American buttercream made with butter and powdered sugar because it pipes like a dream without being too sweet like American buttercream.  Italian buttercream is made with beaten egg whites that are cooked through by pouring a very hot sugar syrup into the beaten whites and allowing the mixture to partially cool before adding in cubes of butter. The cooked egg whites provide the frosting with its stability as opposed to the large quantities of powdered sugar that give American buttercream its structure. This end result is a frosting that is smooth and rich without being cloyingly sweet. It takes a little more time to make this type of frosting but it’s totally worth it. If you want to try it, check out this step-by-step tutorial which is super helpful.  Below are a few photos of the cake in process. Is it immature of me to find doll-cake-in-process photos funny? They never cease to crack me up.

“I can’t see! This is so tight! Why do I do this to myself?” I think we’ve all felt this way trying to squeeze into that special occasion dress at one time or another.

No piping my cake filling in neat little rows! I just slather it on there and press down a little. It all works out in the end.

Give it a quick crumb coat so that Elsa doesn’t end up with chocolate crumbs all over her dress.

When she gets too hot, and the frosting starts to soften up, just put her (and the piping bag) back in the fridge to firm up.

Ta-da! Yes, I let Eve help me apply the frosting and the snowflakes. She insisted. I think she did a great job. She was not very happy that Elsa’s dress was not completely blue. But I just couldn’t handle the thought of eating a blue cake! I guess the birthday girl does not always get her way around here.

 We are eating this cake later tonight but having already sampled its component parts, I know it’s going to be good!

Gratitude and Hamburger Buns

Hi. How are you holding up? Loving quarantine or hating it? Something in between? I love listening to what unusual and surprising things people enjoy about being forced to slow down, stay home and “social distance”. One of my friends, gainfully employed and not really looking for a new job, interviewed several times for an exciting new position, and got it! She starts in June and I am so, so happy for her. It’s nice to hear about good things happening for people right now, especially because we have been so inundated with bad news these last several weeks. Within the last two weeks both of our companies underwent massive layoffs. It was an incredibly stressful time, but both of us survived those cuts and still have our jobs, which feels like a miracle right now. Last week I felt sort of paralyzed, not sure what the future would look like. Would I be home with the kids? Or would I have a job? Would I be able to find another one if I was let go? Would it even make sense to look for one? 

It feels so strange to have your whole existence in limbo. Everything from not knowing when schools will reopen to whether or not we will have jobs, things we normally take for granted - suddenly completely out of our control.  Now, thankfully, we are able to look towards the future. And even though there is still so much uncertainty, it feels amazing to be able to make decisions, like whether or not to refinance our house, or to get some help at home with the kids now that we know we will both be working (harder than ever) for the foreseeable future. 

While the stress and uncertainty of the past few months, especially the last few weeks, has been difficult, what I am feeling most is gratitude. Yes, I’m relieved that we still have jobs. And grateful. I suppose that has led me to think about how lucky we are in other ways as well. I’m grateful for a financial safety net and for family and friends that we could count on to be there for us and help us in any way possible if the worst were to happen.  I cannot imagine what the last couple of weeks would have felt like if we had no idea how we would afford food or other essentials given a different outcome, and I know so many are in that exact situation right now. My heart goes out to them. 

I’m grateful that we have four kids close in age. Even though it's chaotic over here, they entertain each other and we’ve watched them grow ever closer in the last several weeks. Witnessing all of their individual relationships with one another blossom has been priceless. They still miss their teachers and friends at school, but I know it would be much more difficult for all of us if they didn’t have each other. 

I’m grateful for these tough days to remind me of what is really important and the people who are most important.  To make me see more clearly how we are all connected and that we are never alone. I’m grateful to be forced into stepping out of my busy life and to think about the big picture. 

If I’m being honest, I know that I’m grateful because focusing on my gratitude is easier and feels so much better than being angry, sad, or fearful. If I can still connect to my gratitude then I can look forward and move forward with optimism.  In the spirit of that optimism, I’m continuing to try new things in the kitchen. Now that better weather has finally arrived, and it’s Memorial Day weekend, we are grilling! 

Dough balls. Soon to be pillows of deliciousness. I have (can you tell?) never mastered making balls of dough that are actually smooth all the way around, but who cares?

There are only a few dinners that every single person in the family really likes. One of them is burgers. So today we made burger buns from one of my all time favorite recipe sources, King Arthur Flour (recipe here).  Oh yeah, and have I mentioned that I am grateful that all the time at home allows me to make bread? I love making bread, but the time it takes to let it rise, proof and rise again never works with my schedule.  Which is super-frustrating because nothing about it  is time consuming in terms of “hands on” time, yet all of the waiting periods in between next steps make it difficult to execute when you are running between work and schools and activities constantly. Now, as long as I have ten or fifteen minutes here and there, I can bake fresh bread anytime.

Dough before second rise.

Dough after second rise, brushed with butter (and topped with everything bagel seasoning and poppy seeds.)

Out of the oven. These were still really light in color, probably because I chose to brush them with butter instead of egg wash. Next time I would probably go with egg wash. The whole wheat ones browned more in the oven.

These buns have hundreds, close to a thousand, reviews on the King Arthur Flour website.  I love reading the reviews because there are so many from bakers at all levels of experience and there are many, many useful tips and questions answered. Based on the tips in them and on King Arthur Flour’s blog, I decided to make two batches of these. One with white bread flour, whole wheat bread flour, and all purpose flour at a 1:1:1 ratio, and one with all purpose flour and white bread flour at a 2:1 ratio.  As can be expected, the whole wheat version rose less but the finished product was still light and fluffy - shockingly so for a whole wheat bun - with a little bit more flavor than the white version. The white flour version rose a lot before hitting the oven and puffed up quite a bit while baking. The result was a tender, delicious bun, and eating one warm, slathered with butter - which is what I am doing right now - has me agreeing with all of the reviewers who came before me. These are fantastic. Perfect for a burger, sandwich, or by themselves, store bought buns cannot compare. Please make these. They are so worth it. 

Happy Memorial Day! Big virtual hugs to all of our service men and women who have selflessly dedicated their lives to ensuring that we remain safe, and free. Thank you for all that you do.