Incredibly Moist Pumpkin Bread - The Highest Rated Quick Bread Recipe For Fall (2024)

FAQs

What gives quick breads moisture? ›

The most common liquid ingredients in quick breads are milk and water. The liquid moistens the batter, helps activate the gluten in the flour, and dissolves the sugar in the recipe.

There are a number of reasons your pumpkin bread came out dry. It's possible the particular flour you used was extra “thirsty” for liquid. Try cutting the amount of flour, or adding more milk. It's also possible your oven was too hot, or you baked the pumpkin bread for too long.

You might think you could overcome the lack of flavor by adding more pumpkin purée to your recipe, but you'd be mistaken: By the time you've added enough purée to taste it, your baked good would have a soggy texture on account of all that moisture.

Pumpkin bread can become dense if there is not enough hydration or wet ingredients in the recipe. Another cause is overcooking the bread which can cause it to dry out. Remember, it's always easy to keep cooking if it isn't done but impossible to take cooking time back.

Fats keep your bread moist. If your loaf was too dry, try adding a tablespoon or two more oil next time you make it. Likewise, water does more than hydrate your dough. It helps yeast do its thing, activates gluten and determines the volume of your loaf—all crucial for the right results.

Honey adds both sweetness and moisture to breads such as challah. Be sure to use a pasteurized honey, as wild honeys contain antibacterial properties that can kill yeast. Store honey at room temperature, out of direct sunlight. Honey would makes everything better, but especially sourdough.

If your pumpkin spice bread is gummy or undercooked in the center, it's typically because it either 1) needed more time to bake in the oven or 2) the batter was too wet, which led the bread to collapse in on itself a bit (this happens if you measure ingredients by volume, rather than by weight: it's easy to ...

The natural response to seeing a sunken-in loaf come out of the oven is to assume you didn't fill the pan enough. But actually, the opposite is true: You probably filled it too much. According to Fine Cooking, this is the most common reason why quick breads (like pumpkin bread) collapse while baking.

Cook It on the Stove

Briefly cooking your canned pumpkin purée on the stove can help improve both the flavor and texture. This method helps reduce excess moisture, which gives the pumpkin a superior texture. It also releases the natural pumpkin flavor and helps reduce the metallic taste from the can.

It's important not to use too much baking soda in recipes, as it can result in a metallic, soapy flavor. It is much more powerful than baking powder – you only need about 1/4 teaspoon baking soda per cup of flour to leaven baked goods.

Why is canned pumpkin better to use in baking? ›

Canned Pumpkin Delivers Consistent Results

That's because the amount of water in each pumpkin varies. That means your homemade puree can either yield a perfectly lush pumpkin pie from scratch or one that's unpleasant and watery.

Overmixing can affect your dough by pushing in too much air and kickstarting extra gluten production, both things that can lead to gummy, dried out batter. Our Every Day Life notes that setting your oven too high and baking your bread too long could also be the source of dryness.

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Even though your oven may say it's preheated to 350° F, tests have revealed that oven temperatures can be off by as much as 75° F in either direction! If your oven runs hot, your bread is likely to brown and bake up on the outside before the center has a chance to fully cook.

This can be easily adjusted by increasing the liquid or decreasing flour. If the realization comes too late, The Baking ChocolaTess suggests making a solution that is one part sugar and two parts water. Poke some holes in your bread and lightly mist the sugary solution on top with a spray bottle.

When the toothpick comes out clean, the bread is done. If not, bake 5-10 minutes longer and recheck. PRO-Tip: Do not pull the loaves out without doing a toothpick check. If you remove the loaf too early, the middle will be raw.

Leaving the bread in the oven too long will dry out bread. If the bread has finished baking before the minimum time stated in the recipe, the oven temperature may not be correct. To insure the correct temperature each time you bake, always use an oven thermometer.