Grand Central Flavor: Pumpkin Bread

I recently bought a copy of The Grand Central Baking Book (featuring recipes from Grand Central Bakery in Seattle and Portland), and I selected "Pumpkin Bread" as the first recipe to try. It's an easy recipe and I already had all of the ingredients on hand.

All you have to do is mix together oil, sugar, brown sugar, and pumpkin, add eggs, and then alternately add the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin pie spice -- I don't keep pumpkin pie spice on hand, but I was able to mix my own from cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice) and the wet ingredients (water and buttermilk). You divide the batter between two loaf pans (all three of the quickbread recipes in the cookbook produce two loaves, which I think is great) and bake.

My bread rose quite a bit in the oven and had a very pretty dark golden crust. The bread was very moist and flavorful, with the perfect level of spice. The fact that the bread is so delicious is all the more impressive given that it contains relatively little fat (two loaves only require 1/3 cup of oil and four eggs), and that it doesn't even have the benefit of nuts, dried fruit, or chocolate chips. And as promised in the recipe headnote, the bread stayed moist and delectable for days after baking.

This bread was a very solid performer, and I am looking forward to trying more recipes from this cookbook!

Recipe: "Pumpkin Bread" from The Grand Central Baking Book by Piper Davis and Ellen Jackson, recipe available here at culinate.com.