A Plush Crumb

A dear blue hat and Monastery of the Angels' Pumpkin Bread

I have a blue wool hat that I love very much. It is a simple ribbed hat, made out of some cashmere-wool blend. It wasn’t expensive and it is very soft. The blue is quite dark, navy I’d say, which is my very favorite color of blue. I bought the hat years ago at a store like Uniqlo or Cos, but I can’t remember which and I long ago snipped out the tag. I worry about this sometimes, because I love this hat and have grown so attached to it that I regularly wonder what I will do when and if I lose it. (That if is absurd, after all, I live my life assuming that I will, of course, one day lose it.) Maybe the tag could give me some security that I would be sure to find a similar one when that black day arrives, even though I never see the same hat for sale when I peruse the stores. But never mind, the tag is gone, as is any security about the hat and sometimes when I contemplate this, the future loss of something so dear to me, the anxiety makes me feel a little like I am levitating.

When I was a child, I wore the same pair of shoes for five years in a row. Not the literal same pair, because my feet grew, of course. But I asked my parents - my mother, in my memory, because shoe buying happened when we were in Italy visiting family - to buy the same pair of blue suede shoes five years in a row because they were beloved to me and I wanted to wear nothing else. The shoes were somewhat boot-like, with crepe soles, and made of navy suede. A classic unisex Italian children’s shoe that was, blessedly, available at the shoe store my family visited en masse in Urbino every year. Those shoes just worked and I loved them. Back in Boston with my father, on the days when I would dress myself head-to-toe in navy blue, from the tights to the sweater to the shoes and everything else in between, he’d call me the Blue Devil. I loved that.

Hugo is the same as me. He has a wardrobe full of clothes, mostly hand-me-downs from friends, but he wears the same things day in and day out. And has worn the same boots, repurchased for ever-growing feet, for years, even when it is hot out. It drives his father, who has an entirely different relationship to his wardrobe, somewhat crazy. But I understand him. When you find something that works and you wear it often enough, it becomes a kind of armor, but also a cushion. It is one less thing to think about, one less thing to be distracted by. It is a warm hug and gives a deep-seated sense of satisfaction that you have chosen something that works for you and that you can rely on.

When I was little, every kind of change was terrifying to me. The shoes were just one expression of it. I always thought it was because the rest of my life was too tumultuous, with the constant back-and-forth between Berlin and Boston and always-present heartache of missing a parent. But Hugo, who is having the most stable childhood in one place, with both parents present, hates change too. How funny to realize all these years later that this might mean it is simply who I have always been, rather than a characteristic that developed out of coping with what was imposed upon me.

Last week, after cooking squash for my Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, I made this old favorite of mine, a silky-crumbed, perfectly spiced, not-too-sweet pumpkin bread with some pecans for crunch. The recipe, which I found in the Los Angeles Times a long time ago, comes from the Monastery of the Angels, a community of Dominican nuns in Los Angeles who sell this bread on their website. Here’s an interview that NPR did with one of the sisters in 2007 on the occasion of their 800th anniversary. (Since then, the numbers of nuns dwindled so low that the monastery threatened to close, but Dominican friars came to the rescue and the nuns continue to sell their pumpkin bread and nut brittle, though their future appears unclear. For more on this and how to support the nuns, see this article and click here.)

I had a bottle of pumpkinseed oil, dark green and gorgeous, brought back from Austria a few years ago that I wanted to use up, so I used it for this recipe and it worked beautifully, adding some rich, toasty notes, though vegetable oil is of course a more economical choice. This time, I put the pecans on top of the batter instead of folding them through because I wanted a clearer crunch. I divided the batter between a regular loaf pan and an 8-inch square cake pan, because I wanted to give one of them away to a friend who recently suffered a terrible loss, rather than have one unwieldy, long loaf. We sliced pieces off of the loaf for almost a week.

Favorite recipes provide the same kind of comfort that a beloved pair of shoes or a plain wool hat can. An assurance that, come what may, you can rely on them to deliver a simple pleasure, like a plush crumb sticking to the roof of your mouth just the way you like. Like your feet slipping into old friends, warm and dry, and a beloved, dark blue hat, tugged gently over your ears just before you step out into the cold.

Monastery of the Angels' Pumpkin Bread
Makes 1 13-inch long loaf or 2 smaller loaves
Note: You can bake this in one very large loaf pan, if you have it. Mine is 13 inches long. Alternatively, you can divide the batter between two standard loaf pans, or between a standard loaf pan and an 8-inch square cake pan for a snacking cake (or whatever combination of pans you want!).
The pecans can be replaced by walnuts. You can either toss them in flour and fold into the batter or sprinkle them on top of the cake before baking for a crunchy topping. (In addition to this, you could, if you wanted, also add two tablespoons of Demerara sugar to the nut topping for extra crunch).
You can use vegetable oil, olive oil or pumpkinseed oil.

440 grams / 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
600 grams / 3 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
250 ml / 1 cup vegetable oil
160 ml / 2/3 cup water
450 grams / 2 cups puréed pumpkin or squash
About 65 grams / 1/2 cup chopped pecans (tossed with a spoonful or two of flour, if folding into the batter)
2 tablespoons Demerara sugar for topping, optional

1. Heat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Butter and flour your pan(s) or line them with parchment paper. Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, water and pumpkin until smooth. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until the batter is smooth and there are no streaks of flour left. Fold in the pecans, if desired.

3. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan(s). Sprinkle with pecans and sugar, if using. Bake for about 1 hour (for the smaller pans) or 1 1/2 hours for the large pan or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Cool the pan(s) on a rack for half an hour before turning the loaves out to cool completely. Wrapped tightly, the bread keeps for about 5 days.