I was struggling if I should bake for World Bread Day '06 a special Swiss Bread or if I should bake a Pumpkin Bread. At the end I baked both. I will participate with the Pumpkin Bread (the Swiss will be next time). Why? It's pumpkin season, Halloween is near, this bread is more spectacular and the ginger butter, which goes with, is delicious!

Anyway I tested a lot of bread recipes during the last weeks. Y. had to eat a lot of bread, because I love to bake it, but I don't eat so much. For breakfast I prefer yogurt and fruits. I do not need bread as a side dish. But of course I can not resist the smell of an oven-fresh bread, who could?

Before I came to Spain I never baked a bread. In Switzerland you have a big choice of bread. Contrary to Andalucía, here the choice is not so big, so I began to bake bread by myself. The first attempt was a disaster. I tried several times, each time the same result. It was very demoralizing. I stopped it until a supermarket began to sell bread mixes. Baking with these mixes is easy and it works right from the beginning. But my ambitions were waked and this February I started with sourdough. And now I'm a bread-baking-addict, too.

Enough chatted, now the promised recipe.

Pumpkin Bread with Ginger Butter



75 g pumpkin seeds

Pumpkin Purée
1 tb Butter
350 g pumpkin, peeled and cut into small cubes
1 dl Milk
1/4 ts salt
Pinch of nutmeg

Dough
450 g Wheat flour
50 g Wheat meal
20 g fresh yeast
1 ts sugar or honey
~ 100 g water (I had to take only 40 g)
1 1/2 ts Salt

Ginger Butter
100 g soft Butter
2 cm fresh Ginger, finely grated
1/2 tb fresh Thyme , finely chopped
1/4 ts Salt

Pumpkin Purée
Melt butter in a saucepan, add pumpkin, and steam it. Add milk. Bring to boil, reduce heat and cook until the pumpkin cubes are tender (about 10 minutes). Add salt and nutmeg. Make purée in a food processor. Let it cool.

Dough
Dissolve yeast and sugar in water. Mix flour and meal, make a hole (kind of basin) add dissolved yeast, coat with a bit of flour. Cover and let sit for 15 minutes. Add 2/3 of the pumpkin seeds, pumpkin purée, salt and water. Knead until soft and well-blended. Cover and leave rise for about 60 minutes or until de volume has doubled. Form dough to a ball, put it on a baking sheet. Make incisions (but do not cut through!) to get the bread looking like a pumpkin.

Cover and let it rise another 30 minutes. Spread the pumpkin seeds over the bread.

Bake it on the lower part of the preheated (200 C) oven for about 40 minutes.

Ginger Butter
Mix all ingredients, let cool in fridge. Serve with Pumpkin Bread.



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