In this year Indian summer lasted long. But now the days are getting shorter and air is chilly when I leave the house in the morning. And when I drive through the range of the hills I can see the first sun rays turning the misty valleys below into golden lakes. It is autumn, finally.
And so a recipe, which I got from a reader some weeks ago, fits into this beginning autumn very well. It is a recipe for pumpkin “Stuten”. Literally the term “Stuten” means “Mare” and my reader was very puzzled about it when she moved to Oldenburg many years ago and the bakeries were advertising “It is Pumpkin-Stuten time again”. But in Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein the term means “sweet bread” as well as “horse”. And this pumpkin bread was a steady companion for my reader in the following years.
And when I asked for local recipes she sent a recipe from her kids kindergarten. I modified it strongly (ok, I tore it down and rebuild it from the fragments), so it contains now much less yeast but a preferment and some more liquid, too. And I kneaded the dough much longer as well. All of this together makes the bread irresistibly soft and aromatic. A great bread for autumn!
My second contribution for the pumpkin buffet was a pumpkin ice cream. I used the recipe for 
I have the feeling that autumn is already knocking timidly on my door. I knew that it is still august, in theory it is still midsummer, but after all the rainy days in the past weeks and with the fact that the days already started to get shorter I feel a little bit like autumn. Don’t understand me wrong, I cherish the change of season. It is like George de Santayana says: “To be interested in the changing seasons is . . . a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” And I love the change from summer to autumn – maybe because I was born in this special atmosphere between theses seasons in September 29 years ago.
Autumn means to me: red leaves, apple scent and orange pumpkins. So what is a better bread for autumn then a pumpkin bread?