Please eat me!

Seemed to call the pumpkin bread I baked yesterday. I grew up with wonderful soft and yellow pumpkin bread, and since I can't get it in the shops, I'll just bake it myself. Now you need to understand that I'm the worst baker in the world. Okay, one of the worst bakers with potential to improve. I've never been a great cake eater, so I never really felt the need to do them myself. The only ones I really love are baked cheesecake, Black Forest cake, and marble cake. Morrisons sells a mean Black Forest cake, and marble cake is really easy to obtain. I found one bakery that does a great cheesecake, but it's not baked.

Recently I was overcome by a desire to have a proper cheesecake, so I set out to do my own. Since I don't own a scale it was a bit of risky task, even though it's easy to make. It was edible, despite not being sweet enough; I just need to add more sugar next time. But the consistency was wonderful and exactly how I remembered it. I'm a bit of a cheesecake connoisseur, me.
I'll bake another one soon, and will post about it, so keep your eyes peeled.

Today, it's the bread I want to celebrate. After I've thrown away another too-wet-batch, I've decided to try using more yeast, and voila, it worked. I wasn't sure it would as it the dough was rather dry, which may be the reason for the bread being more dense, but it's tasty nevertheless. I'm sure next time I'll get it right.

Here's what I used:

The flesh (pureed) of a carving pumpkin (others may be better for colour)
Plain flour (about 500grams)
Melted butter
Salt (roughly a teaspoon)
Fruit sugar (roughly three tablespoons)
Dried active yeast (about a tablespoon)
A bit of milk
One whole egg
The zest of half an orange

Mix all ingredients, then knead until the dough is dry and doesn't stick to your fingers anymore. (about 5 minutes) Put in a bowl, cover with clingfilm and let it rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.
Then knead again for about 2 minutes and put in the form you want to use for baking. Let it rest in warm place for another 20 minutes. Then bake for about 35 to 40 minutes. You need to adjust the baking time to the size. As I said, I don't really measure and do things by eye/feeling.
The bread is ready when it has risen considerably and is golden brown. To check stab a knife into it; if it comes out dryly, you should be safe.

I love eating it with salami or cheese, but it goes with anything really.