Whole Wheat Pumpkin Beer Bread!

It's my favorite time of the year. All those things that you only really get once a year start rolling around the supermarket again! This recipe incorporates two of my favorite holiday items: pumpkin and sweetbread!!! Now let it be noted that the love of pumpkin was something I happened up (although I'm not really sure how), not something instilled in me by family tradition. The sweetbread, on the other hand, was a staple so integral to our house during the holidays, I'm pretty sure grandma cooked it nearly every other day because there was always someone else to give it to as a show of merriment for the season and love. The one thing my grandmother taught me growing up is to appreciate everyone. EVERYONE. The bank tellers, the plumbers, the AC repairmen, etc. Even to this day, if we call about the AC in grandma's old house in the middle of a heat wave in the summer, they get to us way sooner than is reasonable.

So here follows some way yummy than I would have imagined pumpkin beer bread adapted from The Realistic Nutritionist where my additions/substitutions/subtractions are all noted under each ingredient.

MIXING!

• 1 cup whole wheat flour & 2 cups all purpose flour
• I used 3 cups whole wheat flour.
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• I added 1 teaspoon of baking soda in addition to the tablespoon of baking powder because of the honey I add later on.
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 – 4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (just do it all. You know you want to.)
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• I did use brown sugar here. It's fairly hard to replace both brown sugar and white sugar at the same time without completely bombing the consistency since both subs I use are wet, not dry.
• 2 tablespoons regular sugar
• Here, I substituted 1 tablespoon of honey for the white sugar.
• 1 cup of canned pumpkin
• YUM FACTOR!!! :D
• 12 ounces beer ([she] used Oktoberfest)
• I used Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale. (If you like pumpkin and haven't tried this, you totally should!)

• 2 tablespoons of melted margarine (you can also use butter)
• I opted out of this step.
• Cooking spray

My additions:

• some undisclosed amount of cinnamon
• a very small dash of allspice
• 3/4 cup chopped pecans
• about 1 cup of pumpkin seeds

COOK IT!

1. Preheat oven to 375` F.
2. Spray a (fairly large) loaf pan with cooking spray and set aside.
3. Mix flours, baking powder, sugars, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, allspice, and salt.
4. Add in pumpkin, beer, and honey, mixing until fully combined.
5. Stir in pecan chips.
6. Pour mixture into the prepared loaf pan (more like plop). 
7. Cover top with pumpkin seeds and press them down so they will stick to the bread after baking.
8. Bake for 50-60 minutes until the center comes out clean when poked with a toothpick.

The yumminess that is pumpkin beer bread.

As you can see, the bread is literally half gone before I even thought to take a picture of it. And it rose! A lot! Yayy!! It's not really sweet which is good around the holidays, but it's just sweet enough to be a dessert-ish type thing. I opted out of the butter because I don't like to put butter on my sweetbreads. The pumpkin seeds made it more savory so if you're really looking for a sweetbread, I would add a bit more sweetness and skip the pumpkin seeds. The ale is light and more of an undertone unlike the last one, leaving it kinda neutral so you don't get a true beer bread flavor, but it's there very very subtly.

Now off to eat the rest. hehe.

Oatmeal Stout Whole Wheat Honey Bread (Revised)

So I am endeavoring to blog once a week... Thanks to Johnica! If she can do it, I can too! :D

This is what prompted the bread.

So we moved to College Station in August. My mom helped us move, and she was nice enough to buy us some stuff while she was here. We were perusing and saw oatmeal stout. I LOVE oatmeal, so what do I do? I'm like why not this? ... I'll tell you why... It tastes like a stale Guinness Extra Stout mixed with coffee. Now as you might know, I am a tea addict, like pretty literally, but I am NOT a coffee fan. So what do you do with beer you literally can't drink because it tastes so bad? You make the next best thing: beer bread! Well I've never done this before so here goes the experiment via Peanut Butter Boy (where you will find the original recipe). So of course you know me... I had to mess with it. ;)  The comparison recipes are as follows:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups whole wheat flour (or WW pastry flour or spelt flour)
• I used plain old whole wheat flour.
• 1 cup extras (optional Scrap the optional and try anything. I bet the fruit loop beer would be awesome with dried fruit in it!)
• I used rolled oats (because it was oatmeal stout).
• 2 tablespoons raw sugar
• I used 1 tablespoon of honey because you know we don't do sugar in here.
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• I used 2 teaspoons baking powder &
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (because of the acidity of the honey)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• I used 1/2... because I forgot to read the amount. haha.
• 1 (12oz) bottle beer
• This is where that horrible oatmeal stout comes in... Please feel free to use ANY other beer.

• Extra Additions:
• 1-2 tablespoons of melted butter
• enough oatmeal to cover the top of the loaf

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 and put rack in the center of the oven.
2. Add all dry ingredients to a large bowl, making sure to lightly spoon the flour into measuring cups to avoid using too much. Whisk together all the dry ingredients.
3. Lightly grease a 9 x 5 bread pan with butter or cooking spray.
4. Pour beer (and honey) into the dry mixture and stir to with a wooden spoon. (Supposedly here it gets tough to stir, but I bet because I used honey instead of sugar that mine was a smidge too wet for that nonsense.)
5. Transfer dough to your bread pan and press down gently so it spreads out evenly.
6. Pour butter over the top of the loaf. Then the oatmeal... or vice versa...
7. Bake for 1 hour. Let sit for 5 minutes in the pan.
8. Slice thin and spread on butter or nut butter or not. 

Before Bake

After Bake

So it didn't rise like I would have liked it too, but it was certainly tasty! :) More baking powder next time!

This is from the revised ingredients. It rose quite a bit more. Still as tasty!

Peanut Butter Boy said: "Leftover bread will stay good for a week, but toast it first to restore the crispiness. You can also freeze the loaf for several weeks."