Pumpkin and rosemary loaf

Pumpkin with Rosemary sounds interesting. This was one of the first recipes that attracted my fleeting glimpses while browsing the latest edition of the Superfoodideas. Down my memory lane I had few yeasty disaster that stopped me further pushing myself into bread baking exploration. I was quite content with baking cakes and cookies until I started my blogging. The whole world of wonderful blogs was bursting with some awesome bread recipes that again propelled me to try my hands with this yeasty mystery.

I started using instant dry yeast and results were quite pleasing. Information about various kinds of yeast can be found here. After scores of failure, I realized one of the biggest mistake is the temperature of the water that allows the yeast to ferment. It should be warm enough to make your fingers feel comfortable when dipped. If using the thermometer then the ideal temp is 100ºF for fresh yeast, 110ºF for active dry yeast. Hot water kills the yeast resulting into sure failure.

Now that I have realized my blunder, bread baking is part of my cooking repertoire and the aroma of freshly baked bread often wafts through the house.

The original recipe had called for SRF but I have used a combination of bread flour whole wheat flour and instant dry yeast.

Ingredients
1 cup bread flour
1 ½ cup whole wheat
½ cup corn meal
3tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
2tbslp rosemary leaves chopped
2tsp instant dry yeast
2tsp salt
2/3 warm water/milk
2tbslp pumpkin seeds
1 cup pumpkin puree

Method
Cook pumpkin in a saucepan of boiling water for 10 min or until tender.Cool and gently mash with fork. In a bowl mix flours and corn meal. Add salt, yeast, rosemary, cheese, pumpkin puree and warm milk/water to knead into soft dough. Grease a loaf pan and place the dough in the pan. Cover with a plastic wrap and let the dough rise to double the size. It will take approx 1 ½ hours.

Brush the top of the loaf with milk and sprinkle the seeds. Bake for 10 min in a preheated oven at 220 c. Then lower the temp to 175 c and bake further for 20-30mins till the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath.

When done, remove from the oven and let it cool down. Slice and serve with butter or cheese.
It tastes divine.

Some of the websites that I found useful and have got information about making bread are The freshloaf has got some wonderful tutorial for newbie’s. Mydiversekitchen has some great healthy bread recipes too and I also loved the DK's banana bread, it is a must every week at our home. Now I can bake my bread and have it too. I know the corner side baker is not a very happy man when he sees me smiling walking past his shop. Like they say the cat’s out of the bag for him now.