Pumpkin Pecan Bread

     Fall is without a doubt my favorite season.  I love the cool weather and the warm colors.  I could stay outside all day.  And I love pumpkins.  Every autumn I think about my buddy Keri and pumpkin spice coffee.  Keri is a pumpkin spice coffee fan, fiend, and freak!  Several years ago we went to the Texas Renaissance Festival (really fun festival if you can ever get there), and that's when I learned about Keri's pumpkin spice coffee addiction.  When we stopped to fill up the rental car before returning it, Keri had to go in to see if they had pumpkin spice coffee.  While she was in the service station's snatch and grabbit store, we decided to move the car and hide it on her.  (Okay - it was my idea but everyone went along with it, including her hubby.)  Every time Keri would come out of one door, we would move the car to the other side.  The people in the store thought she was psycho running back and forth through the store from one door to the other.  Some how we all found this a lot funnier than she did.
      But this is supposed to be about bread.  I refer to my life before Hurricane Katrina as my past life.  In my past life I had a bread machine and several bread machine cookbooks.  One of the books had a recipe for Pumpkin Pecan Bread.  The recipe is for a hearty loaf with minimum spice and sugar.  The flavor really comes from the pumpkin and the pecans.  Here I go again - off on a tangent.  I grew up in New Orleans East when it was called Little Woods.  I lived on Hayne Blvd before there was a levee or a four lane paved road.  Lake Pontchatrain was across the street where I spent many a summer time swimming, fishing, and crabbing.  We had two pecan trees in the back yard that were planted by my pawpaw when I was very young.  It was not until I was teenager that we actually started getting pecans.  We would gather up the pecans, and my mother would sell what we would not use.  One year she had a Schwegmann's bag full of pecans on the carport.  A couple of days later the bag was half full.  I am sure the squirrels thought they had found nirvana.  They had been stealing her pecans.  Back to bread. My husband scanned the Pumpkin Pecan Bread recipe for me, so it survived Katrina, but the bread machine did not. I did not replace my bread machine after the hurricane and will not.  My quandary was how do I convert the recipe from bread machine to traditional oven baked.  All I can say is the internet is a wonderful thing.  I searched around and found what I needed.  The bread was just as I remembered it - flavorful, moist, fragrant, and delicious.  We enjoyed it fresh from the oven and toasted for breakfast, however, sliced about an inch thick it made killer French toast.  I had my  French toast with powdered sugar, but Wayne assured me it was equally good with warm maple syrup.  Even if you don't bake your own bread, buy a loaf of store bought seasonal bread, slice it up nice and thick, and turn it into your own special weekend French toast.