Episode Six · The Versions We Keep
The house pumpkin bread.
One loaf. Written for nine thousand feet, with the sea level
numbers beside it. Somebody is in it. Somebody is in most of mine.
Why there are two sets of numbers
At nine thousand feet the air pushes back less, so the same leavening
rises too fast and the loaf collapses on itself. Less soda, a little more
flour and liquid to hold the structure, a hotter oven to set it before it
falls. At sea level, use the plain numbers.
What you need
- 1¾ cups all purpose flour (at altitude: plus 2 tablespoons)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda (at altitude: ¾ teaspoon)
- ½ teaspoon fine salt
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon, ½ teaspoon nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon ground ginger, and a scant ¼ teaspoon cloves
- 1 cup pumpkin purée, plain, not the pie filling
- ½ cup neutral oil, or melted butter if you want it richer and a day less keeping
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- ¾ cup white sugar and ¼ cup packed brown sugar (at altitude: take two tablespoons off the white)
- ¼ cup water or milk (at altitude: plus 2 tablespoons)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
What you do
- Oven to 350 (at altitude: 375). Butter the pan, then flour it, or line it with parchment so the loaf lifts out. Do this first.
- Whisk the flour, soda, salt and spices together in one bowl and leave them.
- In a bigger bowl, whisk the pumpkin, oil, eggs, both sugars, the water and the vanilla until it is one smooth orange thing.
- Tip the dry into the wet and fold until you cannot see flour. Then stop. Twelve turns is about right. A few small lumps are fine. Overmixing is what makes quick bread tough, and there is no coming back from it.
- Into the pan. Level the top with the spatula and leave it alone.
- Bake 55 to 65 minutes (at altitude: 50 to 60), until a skewer in the middle comes out with a few damp crumbs and no batter. If the top is browning before the middle is done, lay a piece of foil over it loosely for the last fifteen minutes.
- Do not open the door for the first forty minutes. It is not going anywhere, and neither are you.
- Ten minutes in the pan. Then out onto a rack, and here is the hard part: let it cool. An hour, if you can. The crumb sets as it cools, and a loaf cut hot falls apart and tastes of nothing yet.
The house standard
A tight, damp crumb that holds a slice. A top that cracked down the middle
on its own. The spice should read as October rather than as a list of spices.
If someone says what is in this, you have it right.
It is better on the second day, wrapped in a tea towel on the counter,
which is another reason not to cut it early.
History suggests you will anyway.
It is somebody’s recipe. Most of mine are.
Somebody is in
it, the way somebody is in the coffee, and every autumn when I make it they are
briefly in the house again.