All Four Burners

Slow Cooker Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts

Posted on 25 October 2012

This bread is a turd.

I don’t mean that in terms of taste. In fact, it was quite tasty and evocative of the season. Yay for pumpkin!

Rather, I refer solely to its physical appearance. The combination of a slow cooker with a quick bread recipe yields an oval brown lumpy turd-like outcome. I don’t recommend serving this as-is to company.

Um, I am going to stop talking about how this bread looks now; that’s not appetizing. Suffice it to say, it’s not pretty.

When this month’s Twelve Loaves challenge was announced, I knew that I wanted to be boring and make quick bread…again. Third month in a row. Why mess with a known formula, especially when I already knew that I wanted to make pumpkin bread? Besides, there will be time enough for yeasty breads when I return to sea level next month.

There was the added complication that October is slow cooker month. All slow cooker, all the time!

Using a loaf pan in the slow cooker felt a bit like cheating. Also, my loaf pans don’t fit in my slow cooker. There was no way that I was going to buy another loaf pan — the last thing I needed was to buy yet more stuff to move.

I kind of wanted to, though.

I searched the interwebs high and low for a slow cooker bread recipe that did not require a loaf pan. It was not easy. It’s a good thing that I am proficient at using search engines.

I found this pumpkin gingerbread that uses the slow cooker insert for baking. The catch? It is vegan. Vegan is a bit of a dirty word in these parts. Simply, I don’t understand non-cheese eaters.

Since pumpkin bread doesn’t have cheese in it, I deemed that, despite being vegan, this recipe acceptable. Also, with some modifications, I had all of the ingredients in the pantry. Not having to buy anything new before the move? Always a win.

Adapted from Healthy Slow Cooking