How to Make Vegan Gluten Free Pumpkin Bread [Video]

Perfectly moist vegan gluten-free pumpkin bread recipe that uses neither oils nor refined sugar. It’s a healthy alternative to those enjoying the indulgence of baked goods.

My quick bread deserves attention because it’s:

• Totally plant-based
• Dairy-free
• Gluten-free
• Oil-free
• Candida diet friendly (use xylitol and/or stevia)
• Nut-free (use seed butter)

To be honest, this recipe wasn’t a success at first go. I tried to bake this gluten-free pumpkin bread without any leavening agents at first, but the result was a bit too mushy inside. My next go was with baking soda, but too much of it with no acidic medium. So, I ended up with perfectly textured bread, but with quite strong soda flavour. Then I finally decided I should google the baking chemistry stuff 🙂 and discovered that apple cider vinegar or lemon juice should be added to make the soda work properly. As a result, I was able to halve the soda amount and save the day.

The Ingredients in My Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bread

Let me start by saying what I DON’T use in my vegan pumpkin bread. You won’t find any eggs, oil (not even coconut oil), xantham gum, or refined sugar (not even brown sugar) in this recipe. To no great surprise you’d find that most pumpkin bread recipes out there contain all those things in addition to white flours and butter. So what’s there left to use?

Dry Ingredients

Gluten-free oat flour is an awesome alternative to regular flours. Should you be intolerant to avenin in oats, check for substitutions below the recipe.

I also brought in coconut flour to bring down the glycemic load. It’s important to note that coconut flour is not the same as ground coconut. Instead, the flour has reduced fat – look for about 12 grams of fat per 100 grams of flour.

My pumpkin pie spice mix includes turmeric, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. Should you be able to buy ready pumpkin spice mix at store, go for it!

Wet Ingredients

Flax egg replaces chicken eggs and does so wonderfully. You simply combine ground flaxseeds and water to get flax egg – all the quantities and instructions are in the recipe.

In most cases pumpkin bread recipes contain pumpkin purée, but I decided to fold in raw grated pumpkin. I’ll dig into the reason in just a bit.

Baking soda does the rising and apple cider vinegar lets it happen. Another acidic medium you could use is lemon juice.

Additive free nut butter is such a good ingredient to use instead of oils or butter. After all, you get only the good stuff from nuts and seeds – fibre, minerals, vitamins and unsaturated fats.

Plant milk is excellent when it comes to replacing dairy milk. The variety is huge – oat milk, soymilk, almond milk, cashew milk, hazelnut milk, hemp milk, walnut milk, millet milk, quinoa milk, rice milk, buckwheat milk etc.

I sweetened my gluten-free pumpkin bread with date sugar, as it’s closest to whole food among sweeteners. However, good alternative would be coconut sugar. Should you be on Candida diet, birch xylitol and stevia work very well in this recipe.

Grated Pumpkin Versus Pumpkin Purée

The reason I use grated pumpkin instead of purée is resistant starch.

Resistant starch is a type of carbohydrate that our digestive enzymes cannot break down in the stomach or small intestine. They, therefore, reach the colon intact, “resisting” digestion and feeding our good bacteria as well as keeping blood sugar stable, among other things.

Starchy veggies, grains and legumes develop resistant starches when they’re cooled after cooking. In fact, cooking and cooling (best overnight) increases the resistant starch content. However, if reheated the effect is lost. So, if you use cooked pumpkin purée in a recipe and then bake it, you lose the positive effects of resistant starch. That’s in a nutshell.

Finally, let’s set the scene for this pumpkin bread…

Imagine brightly coloured autumn that you can admire through the window from the cosiness of your own living room. If you have a fireplace, it’s lit up and you’re all snug and warm in front of it. The flavours of pumpkin bread are floating from the kitchen and you’re waiting for it to cool to have a slice with applesauce or nut butter accompanied by a cup of tea or coffee. And all that while chatting to your best friend, partner or child. Now, do you fit into this scene?

To sum it up, it’d be quite difficult to find a healthier pumpkin bread recipe – not saying that it’s impossible though 🙂 Don’t eat the whole loaf at one go though as you’d get a day’s worth of energy!

In case you’re a visual leaner, watch how I make this vegan pumpkin bread in the below video:

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Gluten Free Pumpkin Bread

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• Author: Nele Liivlaid
• Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
• Yield: 10 servings 1x

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Description

Perfectly moist vegan gluten-free pumpkin bread recipe that uses neither oils nor refined sugar. It’s a healthy alternative to those enjoying the indulgence of baked goods.

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

Dry:

• 110g (3.9oz) oat flour
• 110g (3.9oz) coconut flour
• ½ tbsp. cinnamon
• ½ tsp. cardamom
• ½ tsp. ginger
• ¼ tsp. allspice
• ⅛ tsp. cloves
• ⅛ tsp. nutmeg
• 1 tsp. turmeric
• 1 tsp. baking soda or 3 tsps. low sodium baking powder (for Plantricious version)
• ½ tsp. Himalayan salt

Wet:

• 3 tbsps. ground flaxseeds + 90g (3.2oz) water
• 100g (3.5oz) peanut butter at room temperature
• 4 tbsps. date sugar (see substitutions below)
• 180g (6.3oz) oat milk
• 1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 150g (5.3oz, 1½ cup) grated pumpkin

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Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
2. Start by combining 3 tbsps. of ground flaxseeds with 90g (3.2oz) water in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. Then, grate pumpkin or butternut squash.
4. Next, in a large mixing bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients.
5. Now add date sugar into the flax mixture and stir until the sugar dissolves. Then, pour in peanut butter and mix until well incorporated. At this point start adding oat milk gradually until you have a nice and smooth mixture. Finally, mix in apple cider vinegar.
6. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry and mix really well with spatula until everything is well incorporated.
7. Finally, fold in grated pumpkin. Don’t worry, the batter is supposed to be quite thick.
8. Transfer the batter into the prepared loaf pan or tin (lined with parchment paper, about 25x9cm, 8.5×4.4inch) and bake at 175°C (350°F) for 70 minutes until golden brown and toothpick inserted comes out clean or almost clean. Remove from oven and lift the bread out of the tin. Place it to cool on a cooling rack (wire rack) or on folded kitchen paper on a chopping board.
9. Let the pumpkin bread cool completely before slicing or it’d deflate and end up being less fluffy.

Notes

You may replace oat flour with any other gluten-free flour or flour mix, e.g. teff flour, raw buckwheat flour. 

Instead of measuring all the spices separately, you may use 4 teaspoons of ready pumpkin pie spice.

Feel free to use coconut sugar instead of date sugar.

Should you be on Candida diet and still haven’t reintroduced small amounts of date or coconut sugar, opt for birch xylitol and/or liquid stevia. Remember, 1 tablespoon of any sugar equals 12 drops of liquid stevia.

Peanut butter can be substituted with any other additive free nut or seed butter, e.g. almond butter, hazelnut butter, tahini, cashew butter, or sunflower seed butter. I wouldn’t recommend pumpkin seed butter as it’s got a very strong taste and intense green colour.

Also, you’re free to use any unsweetened plant milk instead of oat milk. However, you might want to add a bit more sweetener in case you opt for naturally not sweet milks like almond milk and soymilk.

Should you have issues with apple cider vinegar, use lemon juice instead.

Sodium content per serving: 272mg (with baking soda), 148mg (with low sodium baking powder).

• Prep Time: 20 minutes
• Cook Time: 70 minutes
• Method: Baking

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 1/10 of recipe
• Calories: 199
• Sugar: 5.6g
• Fat: 8.7g
• Saturated Fat: 3g
• Carbohydrates: 18.4g
• Fiber: 7.2g
• Protein: 6.3g

Some extra tips:

• As far as pumpkin is concerned, I used butternut squash, but any winter squash would be suitable in this recipe.
• Want to add a little extra something into the recipe? Feel free fold some dark chocolate chips or chopped nuts into the batter before baking.
• I think sweet potato could also be used instead of pumpkin in this recipe. I’d try with 1 cup finely grated sweet potato.

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. For every purchase made from the links in this post, you’ll be able to support my work. So you can look after your health, and contribute to my mission at the same time. Thank you!

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