Sometimes Foodie: Pumpkin Spice Swirl Bread- Wegman's: Cherry Hill, NJ

Pumpkin Spice Swirl Bread- Wegman's: Cherry Hill, NJ

This item isn't new, I definitely saw it last fall, but I never got around to buying or reviewing it. I grabbed a bag this year hoping that it would be good enough to make pumpkin bread pudding, so let's open this up and see if this bread was worth the buy.

I may not enjoy all of their products (and I think most of them are over-priced), but Pepperidge Farm has always had really nice packaging. This specific layout is exactly like the one for their cinnamon raisin bread, it just has an orange color scheme and a little pumpkin mixed in with the cinnamon sticks, so it may not be interesting or special, but it still looks nice.Maybe all of that extra money goes into their design team, if so, they deserve every penny.

There was another shrink wrapped bag inside the main bread-bag (~~bag-ception~~, these jokes are so old now), which seems like overkill, but the bread was really fresh, so I guess it does serve it's purpose. Now, it's been a long time since I've bought any bread from Pepperidge Farm, was it always cut this thin? It seems so skimpy! Do people really use this stuff for sandwiches? Then again I might be spoiled from my years of working at Panera Bread. I might have to use the whole loaf to make my bread pudding. For some reason the limited edition caramel apple bread that Pepperidge Farm released this fall was "thick-cut," but I thought their "thick cut" looked like the normal size of every other bread at the super market. Why didn't they do that with this one? Both flavors sound like they'd make great french toast, but this one is so thin, soft, and processed, it might turn into a mess before it even hits the pan.

Enough whining, time to eat! I decided to try this bread toasted with a little bit of butter, so I threw two skinny slices into my temperamental toaster. As you can see, one slice got a LOT darker than the other, yet it was only set to a "3" on the toast setting. (This thing is possessed.) While it cooked/slightly burned, my kitchen was filled with a nice spiced aroma. The scent was very cinnamon heavy, but I could detect a bit of nutmeg and maybe a little bit of all-spice. Overall, the scent was really close to the normal cinnamon raisin bread that was available year round. Maybe this will taste a bit more pumpkin-y than it smells.

After a few bites I decided that this was a bit more spiced than normal raisin bread, but it really wasn't all that different. Unless you're able to bite into one of those little pumpkin flavored mix-ins, that look a lot like golden raisins, the bread is the same as every other cinnamon-based bread on the market. When you do manage to get one of those little pumpkin spiced bits, this tastes pretty good. The little spiced nuggets (I know, that sounds gross, but I don't really know what to call them) add quite a bit of pumpkin pie flavoring to this bread, but the bread itself is not very pumpkin-y.

On a Pumpkin Scale of 1-5 (5 being the most pumpkin-y) I’d give this a 2. This was more of a cinnamon heavy spiced bread than anything pumpkin-y. but it was enjoyable. f you like cinnamon and cinnamon raisin bread, this is a way to slightly switch things up, but it tastes so similar you might not notice the difference.