What does autumn taste like? I wondered this at the window, looking out at the wonderful light of a sunset coloured by all possible shades of orange. The answer I gave myself is encapsulated in the meaning of a Danish word: Hygge.
What does this mean? In fact, in English there isn’t really a word that encompasses the same meaning – like a benevolent Pandora’s box – all the simple sweetnesses that life grants us every day. In fact, it would mean finding a single word for all the things that make us feel good, pampered, loved. Because hygge is a philosophy, a “happy” way of seeing and reacting to everyday life, a real lifestyle. Hygge is that feeling of well-being in which we like to bask on returning back home after a day at work; knitted blankets, cuddles, herbal tea and warmth play the co-stars to a crackling fireplace. The light of the fire warms first your spirit, then your hands.
Hygge is a way of being, it’s devoting time to ourselves and those we love. It is the homemade pumpkin bread that bakes slowly in the oven, intoxicating our senses with its scent of autumn.
I’ve always liked to associate different scents with different times of the year, in order to recall pleasant memories from the past. And the recipe of these sweet pumpkin bread rolls synthesize perfectly the scents of this enchanting season that has just begun.
Pumpkin bread cheers you up with just one bite, it can put a smile on your face even on the dullest day.
A perfect recipe, like the pumpkin bread from the bakery under my grandparents’ house, which now lies closed with wrapping paper attached to the windows. As perfect as the wonderful memory of my grandmother who would put 5,000 lira in my hand and tell me to go and buy a snack from Mrs. Cesca, all the time watching over me hidden among the heather of her terrace for fear that something might happen to me along those few metres I would cover on foot in the square.
Once tasted, going without this pumpkin bread will be a real sacrifice. It encapsulates in your heart the scent of bakeries of yesteryear, when you would leave with the soles of your shoes dusted in flour and the smell of oven-baked cakes in your heart.
And these are the reasons why we want to tell you about this recipe with the taste of autumn, sweet as only the scent of pumpkin that bakes in the oven can be, capable of warming even the most gloomily grey and leaden autumn day.
Pumpkin Bread: The home-baked recipe
INGREDIENTS (makes about ten pumpkin bread rolls)
- 420 gr type 0 flour
- 350 gr pumpkin flesh (green peel variety, as in the one with yellow flesh)
- 7 gr of dry yeast
- 120 ml of whole milk
- 60 gr of softened butter
- 50 gr caster sugar
- a pinch of salt
- the seeds of 1 vanilla pod
- the peel of half an untreated lemon
- 60 gr of sultanas
- semolina flour for kneading as required
- apricot jam as required
METHOD
- Remove the seeds and skin from the pumpkin then cut into small pieces. Place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake at 160°C for 20-30 minutes (using a fork, check when the pulp is tender and remove from the oven).
- Blend the pumpkin pulp together with 50 ml of milk. Set aside.
- Dissolve the brewer’s yeast in the remaining 70 ml of milk, then mix together with the flour, sugar and the pumpkin puree. I use a kitchen mixer; of course if you don’t have one you can easily knead by hand.
- As soon as the dough is supple and elastic, add the soft butter in small pieces and continue the kneading adding the pinch of salt, the vanilla seeds and the lemon rind.
- Now add the sultanas previously soaked in water to the dough.
- Place the dough in a bowl, cover it with cling film and allow to rise for a couple of hours in the oven with the heat turned off.
- Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto a floured pastry board and shape it into about ten balls.
- Arrange the pumpkin rolls on a baking tray lined with baking paper, placing the balls about a couple of cm apart. Leave to rise covered with a cloth for another hour.
- Bake the pumpkin bread in a preheated oven at 180°C for 30 minutes.
- As soon as the pumpkin bread is baked to perfection, remove from the oven and brush the surface with slightly warmed apricot jam. Enjoy your sweet autumn snack!
Credits immagini: Sara Cartelli
