Pumpkin Bread

I discovered pumpkin bread when an old friend brought some over years ago. From the moment I tasted it, I was hooked. I never thought I would find a recipe to match the glorious pumpkin bread that I had tasted oh so many years ago, but after some experimenting with recipes I found one that has been a success. I make this bread during the holidays for friends and family. I have also used the batter to make pumpkin muffins and pumpkin cake (both of which are great with cream cheese icing, btw, but that's for another post).

Ingredients

1 15 oz can pumpkin puree

4 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup water

3 cups white sugar

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp pumpkin spice

Mix the puree, eggs, oil, water, and sugar together in a large bowl until blended.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, & pumpkin spice.

Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture until blended completely. Pour into whichever container you are using. I have a new Pyrex pan that I usually use for this recipe, but if I am using an older pan I will use Pam, vegetable oil, or butter to line the inside then rub it down with a paper towel before I pour the mixture.

This recipe makes a very large amount of batter and I usually have to divy it up among 2 different pans. I baked a batch of pumpkin bread while writing this post and it took 70 and 77 minutes (one pan was slightly larger than the other). If you are making this as a gift during the holidays, this recipe would be good, but if it is just to snack on around the house, you may be better off halving the recipe.

Here's my bread fresh out of the oven! As you can see it rises quite a bit while baking - I filled each of these pans up to about an inch below the edge. I cut the piece out of the middle of the smaller loaf because the toothpick came out clean but I didn't entirely trust it. Don't worry the bread was fine and it tasted great. :)

Here's the original link from AllRecipes.com. My version has a few minor changes.