Pumpkin bread with seeds

I usually have a pumpkin (or two) at home. In Costa Rica you can buy these the whole year and I think it's one of the most convenient vegetables on earth: while still in their skin you can easily store them for several weeks until you need them, you can make a delicious puree out of it in no time, it's very healthy and what's more, my daughters love it! Last weekend I decided to make something else out of it besides the usual portion of puree for our girls. So I took part of the puree and made a pumpkinbread, and with this I also found a good use for the seeds (due to lack of time and inspiration these used to disappear in the trash can, but that will really change from now on because they're delicious if you bake/roast them quickly with some olive oil, salt and pepper!) 


Here's the recipe and some pictures. This recipe is good for 1 large or 2 small breads - you can of course adjust the quantities depending on how many breads you would like to bake.

Ingredients: 

 - 500 gr (whole wheat) flour

- 350 gr pumpkin puree
- 10 gr salt

- 5 gr dry yeast
- 20 ml olive oil (+ some more for greasing the baking pans and for baking the pumpkin seeds)
- Seeds of 1 pumpkin (cleaned)

Recipe:

1) Prepare pumpkin puree. The easiest way to do this is by putting the whole pumpkin in the oven until soft on the inside (you can test this by pricking the pumpkin with a fork). Once the pumpkin flesh is soft you can take the pumpkin out of the oven, let it cool a little bit and then take off the peel and take out the seeds (set the seeds aside for later!). You can easily make puree out of the soft flesh with a fork. If you have more than the 350 gr. of pumpkin puree that's needed for this recipe, you can either decide to make more breads (make sure to adjust the other quantities of the recipe as well), or you can store the rest of the puree for your next lunch or dinner - pumpkin puree is delicious!

2) Put the flour in a big bowl. Add the pumpkin puree, salt, yeast and olive oil. Mix everything and knead thoroughly until you have a nice smooth dough (by hand or machine - I kneaded the dough by hand and that went fine). Add a bit of water if the dough is too dry. 

3) Let the dough rise in the bowl for 40-45 minutes, covered with a towel.

4) Knead the dough again briefly and then place it into the baking pans previously greased with olive oil (1 large or 2 small baking pans). Then let it rise under a towel for another 40-45 minutes. 

5) Meanwhile, preheat the oven at 210 °C / 410 °F and bake the pumpkinseeds briefly in a pan over a high heat with some olive oil, salt and pepper, until they start changing color.

6) Place the pumpkin seeds on top of the dough in the baking pan and push them a little bit into the dough. Then place the baking pan into the oven and bake the bread for 40 minutes. 

7) Take the bread out of the oven and let it cool off a bit. 
You can let the bread cool off completely, but it will have the best taste when recently baked and still warm. 

Enjoy!