Cream Cheese Pumpkin Bread – Recipe from Yummiest Food Cookbook (2024)

FAQs

Why is my pumpkin bread so dense? ›

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.

Preventing your pumpkin bread from having a soggy bottom is all about how you let it cool. When it comes out of the oven, let the loaf sit in the pan for a 5 minutes. Then, and here's the secret, turn it out upside down onto a cooling rack. Remove the parchment paper, and allow it to cool completely.

HOW DO I STORE PUMPKIN BREAD AND FOR HOW LONG? Place in an airtight container or resealable plastic bag for up to 4 days. To freeze, wrap in heavy-duty foil or plastic wrap and then place in a tightly sealed container or heavy-duty resealable freezer bag. Freeze for up to 2 months.

You want the bread to puff up and crack on top—this is a sign that it has cooked all the way through. It's easy enough to test for doneness by inserting a wooden skewer or cake tester (sometimes I use a paring knife) into the center of the loaf.

All it takes is a small amount of dough enhancer per loaf to create a much lighter and fluffier result. Using a dough enhancer like Vital Wheat Gluten works to improve the texture and elasticity of the dough and elongate the strands of gluten. Doing so allows more room for the gas in the dough to develop and rise.

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.

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. Invest in a simple oven thermometer to help verify the temperature. Make sure you have other bread baking essentials in your kitchen, too.

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.

The great news is that you can make pumpkin bread ahead of time and freeze it. To ensure the bread stays fresh, wrap the pumpkin bread in plastic wrap, then wrap in foil or place in a resealable plastic freezer bag. Freeze for up to 6 months. Thaw the unsliced loaf in the refrigerator overnight.

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 ...

Can I rebake undercooked pumpkin bread? ›

It's not as easy as they make it sound to salvage undercooked pumpkin bread, but if you're lucky this handy trick will work. Heat the oven to 350 F, return the bread to the oven, and bake for another 10 to 20 minutes. This should cook the inside and will work even if the loaf has cooled a little.

Baking temperature

If the oven is too hot the loaf will be brown and crispy on the outside but doughy in the middle and may collapse as it cools. When bread is baked at too low a temperature it will not rise enough in the oven resulting in a dense and sunken loaf.

The usual reason why bread becomes too dense is due to using flour with low protein content. When your loaf is spongy and heavy, you might have also put too much flour into it or made the dough in a cooler or too warm setting.

Too much leavening – If there is too much baking soda or powder in the batter, muffins will rise temporarily, then collapse. This causes them to become dense. For every cup of flour, you only need 1 teaspoon of baking powder or 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda.

You can actually add a small amount of wheat gluten to enhance the dough and make it lighter and fluffier. The more gluten, the stronger the dough is. You can purchase vital wheat gluten and replace 1 Tbsp of flour with the vital wheat gluten. Here's a link to Anthony's Premium Vital Wheat Gluten on Amazon.