Pumpkin and toasted pecan cinnamon swirl soft sandwich sourdough loaf

This recipe was an absolute labor of love. It actually took me five attempts to perfect it.

The first attempt didn’t have enough pumpkin flavor, so I decided to add a whole lot of cinnamon to the second attempt. Well, all that cinnamon backfired and caused the dough to have trouble fermenting.

Then I tried using ChatGPT to help me and it said to pre-ferment my pumpkin. Which I did and the loaf just got worse lol.

So eventually, I went back closer to my original recipe and chose to wait to add the pecans and the cinnamon until a little further in the bulk fermentation to allow the dough to rise properly.

I also chose to do a sweet cinnamon swirl because if I’m going to have a sweet loaf, I want it to actually taste like dessert.

And we finally have a winner!

This has been one of my most requested and popular loaves. It is everything you expect out of a fall flavored sweet loaf. It’s basically like a cinnamon roll and a loaf of bread had a baby.

I really think you are going to love this recipe.

Ingredients for the dough

200g warm water
130g active starter (purchase Grow-rilla)
100g pumpkin
20g avocado oil
60g brown sugar
450g bread flour
9g salt

Sourdough Starter

Inclusions

55g toasted and chopped pecans
2g cinnamon

Cinnamon swirl ingredients

60g brown sugar
10g cinnamon
5g corn starch

If you have a stand mixer you can add all the ingredients and mix for about 2-3 minutes. If not, add the water, starter, pumpkin, oil and sugar to a bowl and mix well. Then add flour and salt. Mix until no large chunks of flour remain. Cover the bowl and let it rest 30 minutes.

Over the next 2 hours complete 4 series of coil folds. Check out my Beginner Sourdough Recipe to learn more about coil folds.

Beginner Sourdough Recipe

You will do 2 coil folds. Then, before the 3rd you will add the pecans and the cinnamon.

Add 1/3 of each on top of the dough and then fold over the dough so that the inclusions are inside. Repeat 2 more times.

Once all the inclusions are added, do a couple coil folds to get the dough back into a ball shape with all the inclusions inside.

Rest 30 minutes and then do 1 final coil folds.

Bulk fermentation will take longer with this enriched dough. Starting from initial mix of the dough til baking was around 8 hours.

Once your dough is ready to shape use wet hands lightly spray your counter with water. Stretch the dough into a large rectangle being gentle as to not rip the dough.

Leaving about an inch border cover the dough with about 3/4 of the cinnamon swirl mixture.

Fold one side in like a letter and cover that with more cinnamon swirl. Fold the other side in and repeat with the cinnamon mixture.

Then gently roll the large rectangle into a log trying to keep the cinnamon swirl on the inside.

Grease a loaf pan and lay your loaf seam side down in the pan.

Cover and let it grow another 2-3 hours. At this point you could refrigerate the loaf overnight. In the morning take the loaf out and let it rise a few hours before baking it.

Cover with another loaf pan. Bake 30 minutes in an oven pre heated to 425°. Then remove the cover and bake another 10 minutes. Cover with a little butter to keep the crust soft. Allow to cool 1 hour before slicing.