baking bread, again

Well, I gave several loaves of the Christmas Bread away, one to Leona of coffee shop fame, and another to my counselor, and one to my gp.  They are all close to me and important to the continuation of my mental health.

So today, I decided to make bread with pumpkin and raisins.  It is in the second rise now and looks and smells and feels good!  I've been having lots of fun.  It's a large batch, so I will do the three loaves and a glass bowl and maybe try making some smaller pats, on cookie sheets.  Then maybe I'll freeze some so that I can take stuff with me to Christmas dinner and other festivities with my guy's clan.

I just made the loaves and punched the other dough down (it's in the smaller metal bowl).  It's looking good!  It's a orangey color with raisins studding it nicely.  It feels good, nice and elastic and firm without being too gunky.  I used some of the wheat gluten, cuz I used the rest of the 50/50 and some regular flour.  The main reason I used the gluten tho is because of the amount of pumpkin I used and there is no risibility in pumpkin.  I can tell that it will be scrumptious when I dive into the test loaf!

The bread turned out very tasty and very pretty!  The little round loaves are about the size of small dinner plates or large saucers.  They will make nice Christmas gifts with bags of coffee (I had bought some backs of various sorts of coffee from Leona last week, I'll repackage the coffee into smaller bags and make gift bags for the adults).  I'll freeze the bread and keep it til closer to the time.

I also mixed up some softened butter with clover honey.  Very tasty on the test loaf, mmmmmmmmmm.   yummy.