Pumpkin Pie Bread (Sweet & Moist)

This pumpkin pie bread is moist, delicious and super easy to make. It is a sweet “quick bread” (similar to banana bread) that tastes like pumpkin pie. Your family will love the taste of this pumpkin bread and you will love how quick & easy it is to make.

This recipe uses vegetable oil (instead of butter) in order to create a moister pumpkin pie bread and to potentially lower the cost of your homemade pumpkin spice bread (because many vegetable oils are relatively cheaper than butter on an ounce-to-ounce basis). Moreover, you can easily make this pumpkin pie bread with or without chopped walnuts (see pictures below).

Pumpkin Pie Bread – Plain Version

Pumpkin Pie Bread – Chopped Walnut Version

Recipe Sections

• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Helpful Tips

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 Cups – Pumpkin Puree – 281 grams – Do not use canned pumpkin pie mix. See the “helpful tips” section below for more information.
• 2 – Large Eggs
• 1/2 Cup – Vegetable Oil – 115 grams – Use a neutral tasting vegetable oil such as corn or canola.
• 1 1/4 cups – White Granulated Sugar – 250 grams
• 2 Cups – All Purpose Flour – 240 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Vanilla Extract – 5 milliliters
• 2 Teaspoons – Pumpkin Pie Spice – 4 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Baking Soda – 5 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Baking Powder – 4 grams
• 1/2 Teaspoon – Salt – 3 grams
• Optional – 1 Cup of Chocolate Chips (170 grams), Fresh Cranberries (100 grams) or Chopped Walnuts (115 grams)

Servings – Roughly 12 slices

Equipment Needed – Measuring cup & spoons, mixing bowl, long wooden spoon, 9 by 5 bread pan, oven mitts, silicon spatula, cooling rack and an oven.

Subscribe to Bread Dad’s free recipe newsletter. This email newsletter covers my newest recipes & more!

Key Ingredients – Pumpkin Pie Spice & Pumpkin Puree

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
• Grease the bread pan (if necessary).
• Lightly beat eggs.
• Add pumpkin puree, eggs, oil & sugar into a large mixing bowl. Stir until fully mixed.
• Mix in the remaining ingredients (except the optional chocolate chips, cranberries or chopped walnuts). Stir until the batter is fully mixed.
• Optional – If desired, add 1 cup of chocolate chips, cranberries or chopped walnuts after the batter has been completely mixed. Stir them into the batter so they are evenly spread throughout.
• Pour the finished batter into a nonstick bread pan. Smooth out the top of the batter within the bread pan.
• Bake in the oven for 65-70 minutes.
• Take out of the oven and let the pumpkin pie bread cool down in the bread pan for 10 minutes. Do not remove the pumpkin pie bread from the bread pan during this 10 minute cool down period. Use oven mitts as the bread pan will be very hot coming out of the oven.
• After 10 minutes, remove the pumpkin pie bread from the bread pan. Place the pumpkin bread on a cooling rack in order to completely cool. This cool down may take 1-2 hours. Gently slide a silicon spatula between the pumpkin bread and the bread pan walls if the pumpkin bread is stuck in the pan.
• Please read the tips section below for extra information on how to make this recipe successfully & to avoid common pumpkin bread problems.

If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. It is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes! Jump to comment section

Other Bread Dad Sections

• Bread Machines – My favorites!
• Bread Making Books
• Bread Mixes – Ingredient kits
• Bread Tools – Bread slicers, etc.

Pumpkin Pie Bread – Fresh from the Oven

Helpful Tips

• The tips below are designed to help sweet quick bread “novices” and/or people with limited baking experience.
• Click on our “print recipe” link if you want to print out this recipe. It includes all of the recipe’s ingredients and instructions. However, the recipe print function does not include our tips section. Please read the tips section in order to avoid common recipe problems.
• This recipe is part of Bread Dad’s series on easy Quick Bread Recipes such as cranberry bread, pineapple bread and blueberry bread.

• 1 1/4 cups of pumpkin puree equal roughly 10 ounces (versus the normal 15 oz in many pumpkin puree cans). So you do not use an entire 15 ounce pumpkin puree can to make this pumpkin spice bread recipe.
• Be careful when measuring and do not add too much pumpkin puree (or your pumpkin pie bread will come out soggy). It can be kind of hard to measure exactly with a measuring cup since the pumpkin puree is not a complete liquid.
• In addition, be sure to level off the top of the pumpkin puree in the measuring cup and to avoid any large “air pockets” in the pumpkin puree. Pumpkin puree doesn’t flow like liquid so you can get some empty spaces near the bottom of the measuring cup if you are not careful. Too many air pockets mean that you are not adding enough pumpkin puree and your pumpkin pie bread might be a little dry.

• Make sure that you are using pumpkin puree (and NOT a pumpkin pie mix). Pumpkin pie mix contains extra ingredients such as water, sugar & spices and this can throw off the taste & consistency of this pumpkin bread recipe if used. If you combine pumpkin pie spice with canned pumpkin pie mix, you will also be adding far too much spice & sugar.
• Pumpkin puree is NOT the same as canned pumpkin pie mix. Pumpkin puree is just cooked & pureed pumpkin (or sometimes other squashes). Canned pumpkin pie mix generally consists of pumpkin (or squash), water, sugar & spices.
• I prefer to use powdered “pumpkin pie spice” (versus canned pumpkin pie mix) because you have better control over the flavor (i.e. you can add less spice to tone down the flavor or you can add more spice for an extra punch of flavor). It is much harder to adjust the flavor when using canned pumpkin pie mix.
• Pumpkin pie spice is usually a bottled mixture of ground spices such as cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, etc. You can find bottles of pumpkin pie spice in most major supermarkets or online. Try to find a brand that your family likes because the flavor of pumpkin pie spice can vary between manufacturers (i.e. some mixes might have more or less ground cinnamon, ginger, etc.).

• Optional – You can turn this pumpkin pie bread into a pumpkin nut bread by adding 1 cup of chopped walnuts or chopped pecans. See the picture of the pumpkin pie bread with chopped walnuts at the top of the page.
• Optional – Or instead of chopped nuts, you can add 1 cup of chocolate chips or fresh cranberries to the batter. However, be aware that these extra ingredients can cause the pumpkin pie bread to be “stickier” after baking (especially on the bottom of the bread pan). So please read the section further down about using baking parchment paper & greasing the bread pan.
• Optional – For a slightly richer taste, you can use brown sugar (packed) instead of white granulated sugar. However, be aware that the brown sugar will change the orange color of the pumpkin pie bread and make it darker.
• Visitors – What do you like to add to your pumpkin breads? Do you add extra spices, chopped walnuts, cranberries, chocolate chips or something else? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below. Help beginning bakers to make an even better or more unique pumpkin pie bread.

• This is a no butter pumpkin bread recipe. It is for pumpkin pie bread with oil and not butter. I find that pumpkin breads with oil tend to stay moister than pumpkin breads made with butter. Vegetable oil is a liquid at room temperature whereas butter is a solid at room temperature.
• You should use a NEUTRAL flavored vegetable oil (i.e. corn or canola oil) in order to make this pumpkin pie bread recipe. Stronger flavored oils (i.e. peanut oil or olive oil) may negatively impact the taste of this moist pumpkin bread.
• Economic Benefit – Many vegetable oils (i.e. canola and corn oil) are less expensive than butter (on an ounce-to-ounce basis). This helps to lower the cost of homemade baked goods (which is a nice positive in times of economic uncertainty). Therefore, a no butter pumpkin bread is usually less expensive to make (depending on the type of vegetable oil used) than a butter-based pumpkin bread.
• Many vegetable oils contain less saturated fat than butter.
• This pumpkin spice bread recipe is made with all purpose flour. You should NOT use bread flour to make this recipe. If you use bread flour, it will come out heavy, dense and chewy.

• What to do with leftover pumpkin puree? I freeze my leftover pumpkin puree to use for future pumpkin breads, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pies, etc. Just make sure to label the container so you can easily find it in your freezer. Containers with unlabeled frozen “lumps” (i.e. frozen pumpkin purée, frozen mashed bananas, etc) look very similar and it can be hard to figure out what the heck is inside!!!
• This pumpkin bread recipe has a little more sugar than my regular banana bread recipes. Banana breads do not need as much sugar because they benefit from the natural sweetness of ripe bananas. Pumpkin puree contains much less natural sugar.
• Pumpkin puree does not equal mashed bananas. You would think that you could swap pumpkin puree and mashed bananas in a recipe. For example, convert a favorite banana bread recipe into a great pumpkin bread recipe simply by replacing the mashed bananas with pumpkin puree. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Pumpkin puree generally contains more liquid than mashed bananas. So if you simply swap large quantities of mashed bananas and pumpkin puree, your baked good might contain too much moisture and come out undercooked, soggy, top collapsing, etc. So just be aware that you might have to trim the pumpkin puree slightly if you experiment & try to convert banana bread recipes.
• If you would like to add a glaze to your pumpkin bread, you should visit our Banana Bread Glaze page. It has recipes for vanilla & chocolate glazes and both work will on a finished pumpkin bread. Glazes aren’t just for banana breads!

• Make sure that your oven has been COMPLETELY preheated. If the oven has not been properly preheated, this quick bread could come out undercooked.
• If your oven does not have a built-in thermometer, you can buy an inexpensive oven thermometer that you can place inside your oven (in order to correctly gauge the temperature).
• Make sure to “grease” the bottom of the bread pan as pumpkin breads can be a little sticky after baking (especially if the pumpkin breads contain chocolate chips or cranberries). Or you can use baking parchment paper to line your bread pan in order to help prevent the pumpkin bread from sticking to the bottom of the bread pan. Baking parchment paper is usually the best option if you have a frequent problem with things sticking to the bottom of your bread pan.
• Pumpkin pie bread can dry out if left unprotected. After the pumpkin pie bread has been completely cooled (and you have eaten some of this delicious quick bread), you should wrap it in aluminum foil or plastic wrap and then store it in an airtight container or large resealable bag. Depending on the heat & humidity of your kitchen, pumpkin bread generally only lasts for 1-2 days at room temperature before it starts to spoil. For longer storage, you should freeze the pumpkin pie bread.

• This doesn’t happen often but if the top of the pumpkin bread looks too moist or under cooked, you should try the “toothpick test”. Gently push a long wooden skewer into the top of the bread and see if any batter sticks to the skewer. If batter is sticking to the skewer then it hasn’t completely cooked. Place the bread pan back into the still hot oven for another 2 or 3 minutes. Make sure to wear oven gloves because the bread pan will be very hot. After the 2 or 3 minutes, remove the bread pan and test the pumpkin bread again with a long wooden skewer.
• Please use the suggested 9 x 5 bread pan to make this recipe. If you start using different sized pans, there is a greater potential for bread top collapses (potentially less bread pan “wall” support for the quick bread as it rises), different interior batter to exterior crust ratios (thus the need for different baking lengths), smaller pans are more likely to overflow, etc.
• You should always try to use relatively fresh baking soda & powder for the best results. For example, using baking soda from an open container (that has been deodorizing your refrigerator for months) may lead to subpar results. Old & hard baking soda/powder may lead to rising problems and/or leave small bitter clumps in your pumpkin bread.
• If you like pumpkin-based baked goods, you should try our recipes for bread machine pumpkin bread, pumpkin cranberry bread, pumpkin nut bread, pumpkin banana bread and pumpkin banana muffins.

• If you have a problem with a pumpkin spice bread recipe, please make sure that you are following the recipe exactly (i.e. using the correct oven temperature), using the correct amounts of ingredients (i.e. don’t eyeball the measurements versus using a measuring cup or accidentally add a tablespoon when a teaspoon is called for), using the correct ingredients (i.e. baking soda/powder versus yeast or all purpose flour versus bread flour), etc. Please don’t “wing” things with recipes.
• My recipes are based on US ingredient measurements (i.e. US cups & tablespoons). However, as a courtesy to our European visitors, I have also included some very ROUGH European equivalents (i.e. grams & milliliters). Since I rarely use European measurements when baking, please let me know in the comment section below if any of the European ingredient measurements need to be changed (i.e. for XYZ ingredient, milliliters are more commonly used versus the grams information listed in the recipe).
• Always wear oven mitts/gloves when dealing with bread pans & a hot oven.
• For other delicious quick bread recipes (i.e. banana bread, cranberry bread, blueberry bread or cornbread), please visit Bread Dad’s main section for sweet Quick Bread Recipes.

If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. We LOVE to hear from people who have enjoyed our recipes! Jump to comment section

Subscribe to Bread Dad’s free recipe newsletter. Or follow us on the Bread Dad YouTube channel.

Reference Sources

• Wikipedia, Pumpkin
• Wikipedia, Pumpkin Pie
• Wikipedia, Quick Bread

If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. Your comments help us to improve & clarify our recipe instructions. Moreover, it is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes!!!

Related Recipes

• Pumpkin Banana Bread
• Pumpkin Banana Muffins
• Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread
• Pumpkin Cranberry Bread
• Bread Machine Pumpkin Bread

Please leave a comment & recipe rating in the comment box below. Thanks!