Down East Maine Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree

• 4 eggs

• 1 cup vegetable oil

• 2/3 cup water

• 3 cups white sugar

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 2 teaspoons baking soda

• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.

2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.

3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Note: It took 70 minutes for my 2 loaves to get done - and they were slightly overdone on the upper edges.  I'm not sure if I should have increased the temperature to compensate for the fact that I had 2 rather large loaves as opposed to the three smaller ones the recipe calls for.

2.  The flavor of this bread is very mild.  It is less sweet that 3 cups of sugar would lead one to expect.  If I use this recipe again, I will use brown subar for half the sugar.