Pumpkin and Cinnamon Bread

A pumpkin and cinnamon tear-and-share loaf recipe!

In case the recipe is hard to read:

Bread:

100g Pumpkin or Squash

30g Butter or Spread

120ml Milk

1 Sachet Yeast

50g Brown Sugar

300g Bread Flour

Filling:

30g Butter or Spread

50g White Sugar

50g Brown Sugar

2 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Nutmeg

50g Pumpkin or Squash

Method:

Dice 150g of pumpkin or squash, then cook with a few drops of water in a small saucepan for 5-10 minutes until soft. Add a little butter and mash with a fork until not lumpy, then leave to cool

Melt 30g butter in the microwave. Add the milk to the butter and heat for another 30 seconds or until warm but not hot. Stir in the sugar and yeast and leave for 5 minutes

Mix the flour, 100g of the pumpkin and a pinch of salt in a large bowl, then add the weird yeasty milk mixture when ready

Combine into a soft dough and knead for a few minutes in the bowl

Grease the sides of the bowl, then leave in a warm place to prove for 1 hour

While the dough proves, melt the rest of the butter and mix with the rest of the ingredients to make the filling

Then procrastinate washing up by carving a face into the side of the pumpkin you didn’t end up using

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for another few minutes

Split the dough into 10 pieces of a vaguely similar size. Keep one piece to the side and roll the others into long sausages of slightly different lengths. Squash the ends of the sausages

Generously spread the filling over every sausage except the shortest one

Arrange the sausages on a lined baking tray with the longest one in the middle and the shortest ones on the edges. They should sit on their sides so that the filling is sandwiched in between each one

Stretch the edge sausages in towards the centre at the top and bottom, and sort of mash all the ends together in a vague hope that the pieces won’t all fall apart

Divide the one remaining piece of dough into two, roll into sausages and stretch one end to taper them (don’t worry I’m going to stop saying sausages now)

Spread one piece with filling and twist them together into a stem. Stick the stem onto the top of the pumpkin and arrange it to look stem-like

Realise you haven’t preheated the oven, then decide that it’s probably a good thing because the bread can have a bit of a second prove as the oven heats up. Whack the oven on at 180oC and stick the bread straight in the cold oven for 30 minutes until brown(er)

If you have some filling left over, mix it with some more melted butter to make a glaze, and brush over the bread while hot

(Optional) When the bread has cooled, mix up some icing sugar and water and draw a face by drizzling carefully with a teaspoon (or a piping bag if you have one of those)