So, Halloween has arrived and I am looking at pots of pumpkin guts sitting on my counter. Sure, I'll get around to roasting some pumpkin seeds & eventually peeling the skin from carved pumpkins and making soup but i want to try something different with what I normally just throw away. I'm talking about the slimy guts, the icky bits! I thought maybe deep frying it in a savory croquette batter or making the ubiquitous pumpkin loaf, but why make load, when you can make bread!

Now I have to be honest, this was supposed to be pumpkin bread, not pumpkin focaccia. But, I didn't realize that slimy pumpkin guts don't play nice with flour, not nice at all... This is almost eligible for the epic fail contest here on Instructables, but alas I turned it around.

Suffice to say this focaccia is swimming with pumpkin flavour, enhanced with brown sugar, cinnamon and a touch of ginger. It tastes amazing fresh or toasted. And it makes a mean club. But enough with descriptors, lets bake.

Step 1: Ingredients

14 ounces of water
1 tablespoon of yeast
4 tablespoons of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger
2 cups icky pumpkin guts, minus the seeds
5 cups white bread flour
1 teaspoon of salt
3 tablespoons of butter

Step 2: Add

Ah, the beauty of a bread machine,

add all your ingredients to your break machine in the order as found in the ingredients list.

Step 3: Mix

Set your bread machine to just mix the dough, its kinda gross with the pumpkin bits. Additionally the pumpkin bits add a ton of moisture and the sliminess stops the dough from really holding together well. Normally my bread uses about 3 cups of flour, even after 5 cups of flour this dough was way, way to sticky. Hence why i decided to make it focaccia style instead.

Step 4: Rise

Normally letting your dough rise in a bread machine is fine, but this stuff took me off guard. For a sticky dough it rose incredibly fast. Ergo I'll be cleaning my machine for a week, watch your dough!