Ingredients

Main Bread

30% of the total weight of flour: Organic Khorason Wholemeal Flour

70% of the total weight of flour: French White Type 55 Flour

3% of the total weight of flour: Fresh Yeast

2.5% of the total weight of flour: Salt

70% of the total weight of flour: Water

Topping

Scattering of Pumpkin seeds Egg

Method

I use Richard Bertinet style of mixing the dough which is good for wetter doughs like this one with high water content.

I mixed the flour, yeast, salt together

Add the water and mix together

Tip it out onto a work surface and turn it into a dough

Put it back in a bowl and leave for 1hour.

Get a lump of dough (I always make a big batch of dough in one go and then divide it up after first rising into the different loaves), in this case I used 400g of dough.

Put it on a floured surface, and use your finger tips to spread it out into roughly a circle. Get a baking tray, and cover with Polenta to stop the dough sticking to the baking tray. Transfer the dough onto the top of the Polenta on the baking tray.

Now the fun bit, use the edge of your scraper to make a nice big mouth. Push it in and separate the dough (Two scrapers might be easier for this). Make it nice and wide, the gap will narrow during the rising.

Next, triangles for the eyes. Cut the triangles out (again I used the edge of the scraper, although you may need a knife depending on the scraper shape). Make them nice and big, because you need the dough for the next bit.

Using the dough from one eye, make little triangles to represent teeth. For each tooth, put a little bit of water on the base of the tooth and attach it to the inside of the mouth.

Using the dough from the other eye, make a stalk for the top of the pumpkin, and attach it with a little bit of water.

Sprinkle the top of the bread with pumpkin seeds and put a glaze of beaten egg over them to make sure they stick on.

Let it rise for an hour.

Put the whole baking tray in the oven at a high temperature (I used 220˚C because thats the highest my oven does). I have a lump of stone in there that I usually cook the bread on, but even with a good sprinkling of Polenta, there is no way I could transfer it to the stone and keep the shape, so I just put the baking tray on top of the stone so that it gets hot very quickly.

I spray some water in the oven (avoiding getting the bread wet), and close the door

Cook for about 14 minutes so that it starts going brown. Cook longer for thicker crust.

Pictures are:

1. Dough on the baking tray just after making the shape and putting the teeth and stalk on.

2. After the hour rising and just before going in the oven. See how the gaps are filling in again, hence leaving lots of space when designing the shape.

3. After cooking.