Here’s a great pumpkin bread recipe that uses natural yeast to make the wheat flour more digestible. When I make something for dinner to use up leftovers in the fridge, I often make bread pudding or a treat like this pumpkin bread as a dessert for my kids.  That way I have something to bribe them to eat the less appealing entree.

Start this pumpkin bread the morning of the day when you plan to serve the bread for after dinner. Or get it going the night before. You use natural yeast to make a “sponge” with flour and milk that you let sit for several hours, for the yeast to act upon the dry flour you add to the sponge. This allows the natural yeast to neutralize the phytic acid in the whole grain flour. This allows the whole grain to be much more nutritious for you. If you don’t know how to make natural yeast, here is the best book ever to teach you:

and here are some video tutorials by one of the authors, Melissa Richardson, on this blog post over here. Melissa’s blog over here also will teach you how to  make natural yeast.

OK, on to the recipe:

Natural Yeast Pumpkin Bread

Mix the following the night or morning before you plan to serve:

1 cup natural yeast starter

1 c buttermilk (you can substitute 1 c milk with 1 T apple cider vinegar)

1/2 c sucanat

1 t salt

2 c flour

The next day, or several hours later cream the first three ingredients and then add the rest and mix together:

1/2 c melted butter

3/4 c sucanat (whole brown sugar, can buy from amazon.com or azurestandard.com)

2 eggs

1 c pureed pumpkin

1/4 t cinnamon

1/4 t cloves

1/4 t nutmeg

1 t baking soda

Add chocolate chips or chopped nuts if you like.

Pour batter into two greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes until a knife inserted comes out clean. Enjoy!

Here’s a free Kindle book (at the time of publication) full of recipes for pumpkin-y baked goods. It’s not totally whole foodsy, so I suggest a few substitutions:

• melted butter for canola or other vegetable oil
• sucanat for sugar
• maybe raw milk with a bit of sugar added for the sweetened condensed milk
• bone broth for the vegetable broth