This simple butternut squash bread is healthy & baked to perfection! It’s low in sugar & high in fiber, a seriously delicious squash bread.
Well, the fall season is in full swing over here at the Byrd house. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that fall is my favorite season!
If you’re like me and love all the fall flavors and baking, then you’re going to love this butternut squash bread recipe! It’s full of cinnamon and maple flavor, is moist and delicious, and is so easy!
Whenever I make this squash bread, my house smells just like fall. I’m loving it, and I’m so excited to share this fall bread recipe with you!
Jump to:
What does squash bread taste like?
Think of butternut squash bread as very similar to pumpkin bread, but made with butternut squash instead! It’s sweet, dense, soft, moist, and has hints of maple and cinnamon baked throughout! With warm spices and tons of extra moisture, this squash bread will be your new favorite fall treat!
It’s a soft bread with a golden brown exterior and is all made with natural ingredients, including real butternut squash!
Ingredients
Whole wheat pastry flour – I like to use whole wheat pastry flour for baking simply because it makes things 100% whole wheat, healthier, and still gives baked goods an amazing fluffy texture!
Cinnamon – One of the primary flavors in this squash bread recipe!
Nutmeg – A little bit of nutmeg goes a long way, you won’t need any more than 1/2 teaspoon for the entire loaf!
Baking powder – The main leavening ingredient, it helps this really moist butternut squash bread rise despite being dense!
Baking soda – Another leavening agent, be sure not to skip it!
Salt – Just a tiny amount of salt makes baked goods a little bit sweeter!
Apple sauce – Apple sauce makes this squash bread recipe sweeter without adding any fat or many extra calories! Even though there is apple sauce in the recipe, you won’t taste it!
Butternut squash – It wouldn’t be butternut squash bread without the squash! It will need to be pureed in order to work in this recipe.
Eggs – Eggs help to hold everything together in baked goods, and give this butternut bread the perfect texture!
Maple syrup – Another sweetener in this recipe. It has a mild flavor but pairs perfectly with fall flavors.
Maple extract – This is totally optional but I definitely recommend it for a stronger maple flavor!
Substitutions
Whole wheat pastry flour – If you don’t have whole wheat pastry flour on hand, you can use regular pastry flour instead or a 50:50 mixture of all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour.
Butternut squash – Pureed butternut squash is what makes this recipe butternut bread, but you can also use acorn squash or pumpkin puree to make a lovely acorn squash bread instead!
Eggs – Feel free to use flax egg instead of regular eggs to make this a vegan butternut squash bread!
Maple syrup – Any liquid sweetener will work, including honey or agave. Honey has a stronger flavor though, and it may alter the taste of the bread slightly.
Spices: Pumpkin pie spice works beautifully in this recipe, but it does make this delicious butternut squash bread taste a lot like pumpkin spice bread!
How to Make Butternut Squash Bread
- Preheat oven to 350°. In a large bowl, mix together all dry ingredients.
- In a separate bowl, mix together all the wet ingredients.
- Pour squash mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not overmix.
- Grease a loaf pan, and pour bread batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 65-70 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. If the bread is browning too quickly, cover for the last 10-15 minutes of baking.
How To Make Butternut Squash Puree
When I was preparing to make this recipe, I discovered that canned, pureed butternut squash is extremely difficult to find. So, there are a couple of different options if you’re looking to make your own butternut squash puree.
First, you can buy the frozen butternut squash, thaw, and puree it in your food processor. This is what I recommend and what I did for this recipe. Because cutting open a butternut squash (even with a sharp knife) can be so difficult!
I was able to find 12 oz bags of frozen, cubed butternut squash at Target for $1.99! You can find it in the freezer section next to all the other frozen veggies. I know that Trader Joe’s also sells it. 12 oz of frozen butternut squash came out to be exactly 1.5 cups of pureed butternut squash, so those bags from Target work perfectly!
The second option for making your own butternut squash puree is to roast a whole butternut squash yourself. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Cut the two ends (stem and root ends) off of the butternut squash, then cut in half hot-dog style (length-wise).
Peel both halves of your butternut squash with a vegetable peeler length-wise, until all the skin is removed. Remove the seeds and stringy bits with a spoon. Dice up your butternut squash and place it on a lined and greased baking sheet. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until squash, is tender and cooked through. Cool before pureeing.
To make the butternut squash puree, place the cooled squash in a food processor and puree until smooth. Roasting your own butternut squash will likely give you more than 1.5 cups of butternut squash puree, so you can freeze the excess in glass jars or airtight containers for up to 3 months.
Tips & FAQ
You don’t have to peel your butternut squash before you roast it, but I always do! Especially if my family is planning on eating it with dinner, peeling it beforehand makes it easier to serve warm. Peeling a butternut squash while it’s hot can cause burns, so I like to get the peeling out of the way before I roast my butternut squash!
Pureed carrots, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin would all work really well in place of the butternut squash in this recipe. They all have a similiar texture and moisture level when pureed, and have similar flavors as well. Carrots and sweet potatoes would probably make this bread sweeter. Just make sure they’re a smooth, pureed texture!
It can probably be considered as both because it’s definitely a vegetable, but it’s a starchy vegetable. Other starchy vegetables are potatoes, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, pumpkin, and delicata squash. It’s lower in starch than potatoes, and tastes great roasted, sauteed, and baked inside this butternut squash bread!
No, it’s not! Butternut squash does have carbohydrates, but they aren’t in the form of sugar. The carbs in butternut squash are in the form of starch and fiber. This butternut squash bread recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of butternut squash, which only contains 4 g of natural sugars.
Like most winter squashes, butternut squash is high in starch and is considered high in carbohydrates. However, it is technically a vegetable, and is very high in many vitamins like vitamin A, C, potassium, and some B vitamins, too!
Nutritional Info
One of the healthiest things about this butternut squash bread is that it does not call for any oil. I purposely left out any refined oils simply because there are so many other ways to make the bread moist! Instead, I used applesauce, maple syrup, and of course, butternut squash.
This recipe calls for 100% whole wheat pastry flour instead of white flour, to give the bread more nutrition and fiber. It’s a denser bread, but it’s not dry at all.
To make this bread vegan, mix together 2 tablespoons of ground flaxseed with 5 tablespoons of water and allow to sit for about 5 minutes, to gel up. Add this mixture to your bread batter, and eliminate the 2 eggs.
Total nutritional content per serving is:
- Calories: 233 calories
- Protein: 7 grams
- Sodium: 384 milligrams
- Carbohydrates: 47 grams
- Fiber: 8 grams
*This nutritional information is an estimate and calculated based on the ingredients used to create the recipe. The nutritional value of your ingredients may differ slightly. Furthermore, this food is not intended to prevent, diagnose, cure, or treat any disease.
Pricing Info
This butternut squash bread is really healthy, but fairly inexpensive to make, too!
The most expensive ingredient in this recipe is the butternut squash itself. That’s because I bought it frozen at $1.99 per 12 oz at Target. If you want to make this recipe even cheaper, simply roast the butternut squash yourself using my instructions above.
This is what I personally paid to make this recipe:
- 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour: $0.45
- 1 tbsp cinnamon: $0.12
- 1 tsp baking powder: $0.02
- 1 tsp baking soda: $0.04
- ½ tsp nutmeg: $0.03
- ½ tsp salt: $0.01
- 1½ cups butternut squash: $1.99
- 2 eggs: $0.52
- ¼ cup apple sauce: $0.05
- ¼ cup maple syrup: $0.48
- 1 tsp maple extract: $0.52
It comes out to be about $4.23 per loaf, or about $.43 per slice.
Other fall recipes
Recipe
Cinnamon Maple Butternut Squash Bread
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp nutmeg
- ½ tsp salt
- 1½ cups butternut squash pureed
- 2 eggs
- ¼ cup apple sauce
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- 1 tsp maple extract (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- In a large bowl, mix together all dry ingredients. In a seperate bowl, mix together all the wet ingredients.
- Pour wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not overmix.
- Grease a loaf pan, and pour bread batter into the pan. Bake for 65-70 minutes, until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. If the bread is browning too quickly, cover for the last 10-15 minutes of baking.
Homemade Butternut Squash Puree
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Cut the two ends (stem and root ends) off of the butternut squash, then cut in half hot-dog style (length wise).
- Peel both halves of your butternut squash with a vegetable peeler length-wise, until all the skin is removed. Remove the seeds and stringy bits with a spoon. Dice up your butternut squash and place on a lined and greased baking sheet.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes, until squash is tender and cooked through. Cool before pureeing.
- To make the puree, place the cooled squash in a food processor and puree until smooth.
Video
Notes
If you end up making this and loving it, take a photo and tag me on Instagram! I’d love to see your versions of my recipes! And feel free to rate it down below in the comment section. I would really appreciate it!
xoxo Megan
Alison Phillips says
Do you measure the squash before or after pureeing?
Thank you
Megan Byrd, RD says
After pureeing!
Danise Flood says
Turned out great. I added some banana & used whole apples, pureed. Did 10 minutes for mini muffins & 15 for regular muffins, 25 for large muffins.
Katherine says
I used acorn squash and gluten free 1:1 replacement flour. The crust (top, bottom and sides) are very hard, almost like a stale tortilla. My dough was very dry, I tried not to overwork it, but I also had to add more maple and apple sauce. If I could figure out the dry crust, I would try this recipe again.
Thank you for making something healthy.
Danielle says
Can this recipe be used to make muffins?
Megan Byrd, RD says
What a great question! I imagine you can make muffins with the batter but I’m not exactly sure how long you’d need to bake them for. I would start with 15 minutes and check every 5 until they’re done.
Carla Montgomery says
My 4 seeds I planted went crazy and I ended up with 24 butternut squashes. I am going to try this, but do you think it will turn out if I use bread flour?
Megan Byrd, RD says
That should work!
Mackenzie Burgess says
This bread is such a delightful treat – especially during these cold months! I would never think to put butternut squash in bread but it turned out SO good!
Megan Byrd, RD says
Yay I’m so glad you loved it 🙂 Thanks for the shout out!
Jean Dent says
This recipe turned out great! I was out of syrup so I used 1/2 brown sugar and 1/2 honey. I added more applesauce because the batter seemed dry. It still came out wonderful! I usually don’t alter recipes the first time I make them. It was done at 60 minutes. I live at 8500 ft. so I don’t know if that affected the baking time, or maybe it was my oven. I did tent it with foil the last 15 minutes. I thought of adding nuts and will try that next time. I going to send it to a nutrionist I’ve been working with. Thank you!
Megan Byrd, RD says
I’m so glad you loved it 🙂 I bet candied pecans on top would be SO GOOD!
Teri Colville says
really easy to make and very moist and tasty as it is written. however I like sweeter so I added pecans and maple on top. Next time I will add pecan throughout and raisins.
Megan Byrd, RD says
That’s a great idea Teri! I’ll have to try it with pecans! 🙂
Leola Dooney says
I just made the made this recipe. I love it. Very easy to make. It is not as sweet as other bread recipes I have made and a lot healthier! I will definitely make this again!!
Megan Byrd, RD says
I’m so glad you liked it! 🙂