7 Store-Bought Pumpkin Bread Mixes, Ranked

The pumpkin has been a staple of the human diet for thousands of years. This type of produce has long been revered by native cultures for its nutrition, hardiness, and versatility. The first evidence of pumpkin being used in a pie recipe dates back to 1796 when it appeared in the cookbook "American Cookery" by New Englander Amelia Simmons. Today, along with pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread recipes are also popular.

Pumpkin bread is a delightful recipe year-round but is particularly popular as autumn approaches. It is festive and makes for a thoughtful, edible holiday gift. That said, pumpkins are notoriously messy to clean and process, so baking pumpkin bread from scratch can be tedious and time-consuming.

For this reason, many of us turn to store-bought pumpkin bread mixes. These are quick, easy, convenient, and affordable. Many mixes now come in recipes that can accommodate unique dietary needs, like gluten-free, paleo, and keto. However, it's often hard to know which of these store-bought mixes are worth stocking in your pantry.

We baked, cooled, and sampled as many of these mixes as possible to take the guesswork out of it for you. We ranked them based on ease of baking, quality, texture, and, most importantly, taste. Read on to see which store-bought pumpkin bread mix reigned supreme.

At the bottom of our list was the Lakanto Pumpkin Spice Muffin and Bread Mix. The Lakanto brand creates tasty, healthful, and unique products featuring monk fruit. It's useful because, by extracting the monk fruit, the company can produce a product that is 300 times sweeter than sugar but isn't artificial.

This mix is gluten-free, keto-friendly, non-GMO, and plant-based. Primary ingredients include monk fruit sweetener, almond flour, oat fiber, tapioca fiber, fava bean protein, cellulose, psyllium, spices, pumpkin, sea salt, annatto extract, baking powder, and baking soda.

Assembling the batter required adding eggs, coconut oil, and water. It created a thin batter that only filled our 8 by 4-inch loaf pan halfway. The batter itself had a pumpkin aroma and bright orange hue. It took roughly 40 minutes to bake through. When it was done, the bread barely rose, only filling the pan three-quarters of the way up. The aroma of the finished bread was sweet, with no hint of pumpkin spice.

Having used monk fruit sweetener before in baking, we expected this bread to be sweeter than the others we sampled. We were correct. We also found that the monk fruit caused the bread to adhere to the baking pan, even when a non-stick one was used. The texture of this bread was dry, tacky, and hard to swallow. If there was any pumpkin pie spice, it was overshadowed. There was a distinctive aftertaste from the monk fruit that could not be ignored.

Next to last on our list of pumpkin bread mixes was this gluten-free offering from XO Baking Co. This brand was developed by a certified health and nutrition coach, who happens to be an avid baker with celiac disease. Her primary goal in creating these products is to make gluten-free baked goods that taste like the real deal. We wish we could say that she fully accomplished this, but we can't. Though this bread was decent, it didn't resemble pumpkin bread that contained gluten.

The mix includes cassava flour, potato starch, coconut flour, and xanthan gum. Sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg are also included. What we found bizarre and inconvenient is that you cannot make this bread without canned pumpkin. Most of us don't have that lying around in our pantries. We had to make an extra trip to the grocery store in order to bake this. It also requires oil and water, and creates a thick batter. It filled our 8 by 4-inch loaf pan to the top. It took 70 minutes to bake and never rose beyond the top of the pan.

The texture of this bread is dense and gritty. Its flavor has cinnamon and nutmeg — which give it the illusion of pumpkin pie — but you can hardly taste the pumpkin purée. The coconut and cassava flour pretty much overwhelms everything else flavor-wise. It didn't excite us like some of the others we sampled.

King Arthur Baking Company has been a part of the fabric of American baking since as early as 1790. It has seen the birth of many different iterations of American bread, from sourdough to banana to zucchini. Its foray into gluten-free baking was simply a matter of time. We haven't had a lot of luck using King Arthur's gluten-free flour in our homemade gluten-free bread recipes, so we were somewhat skeptical of this mix. We stood corrected, as we were pleased with the moist, fluffy bread this harvest pumpkin mix yielded.

This bread is made with pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger to encapsulate the full flavors of fall. Plus, it's certified gluten-free. We followed the baking instructions to a tee, including allowing the batter to sit for 10 minutes before baking the bread, which helps it rise and homogenize. Though the dough was seemingly thick and starchy, when it emerged from the oven an hour later, this bread was as moist and light as any of the non-gluten-free mixes we sampled.

The aroma of this was predominantly cinnamon-forward with a hint of brown rice. The flavor was sweet, but not overly so, with subtle notes of pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. As one note, we would prefer more aggressive spices. Still, it would be suitable for entertaining anyone, regardless of whether or not they need to eat gluten-free.

The quality of a product is often found in its name. Krusteaz gets its moniker from a mash-up of the words "crust" and "ease," and its baking products epitomize both. Having used other mixes from this company, we had high expectations — which were largely met. All you need is to add water, oil, and eggs to the batter. Though you can doctor this bread up using add-ins, we decided to try it straight up to give us a pure comparison with the other mixes sampled.

We baked this in an 8 by 4-inch loaf pan, and per the instructions, it was finished in exactly one hour. When we pulled this loaf of bread from the oven, we were surprised at how well it rose. It was fluffier than any other loaves we baked and looked homemade. 

The ingredients used in this bread are simple, with sugar being the first thing listed. This explains why it stuck to the pan more than the other breads. Its aroma was also milder; you could barely detect the pumpkin spice.

The texture was moist and light, though we thought it more closely resembled a pound cake in execution than a classic quickbread. It was also sweeter, which may have masked the pumpkin and spices. If there had been more cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg, we might have ranked this higher on our list. This was a good bread, but it didn't accomplish that quintessential autumnal harvest flavor.

We never thought a gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, cane sugar-free, plant-based, paleo-friendly pumpkin bread mix made with almond and coconut flours would land near the top of our list. No disrespect to Simple Mills, but this mix has only eight ingredients. We couldn't quite wrap our heads around how it could produce a bread with a satisfying texture.

The instructions require adding water, oil, and eggs to the mix. When we poured the batter into our 8 by 4-inch loaf pan, we noticed it only filled it halfway. This concerned us somewhat, as we weren't convinced it would rise much more, given the density of ingredients. If we are honest, the recipe calls for covering the bread lightly with foil after 15 minutes in the oven, presumably to keep the nut flour from burning. We forgot to do this step. Fortunately, this did not impact the final bread, which came out perfect after baking 45 minutes.

Though the bread didn't rise much, it did fill out the pan about three-quarters of the way. The color of this bread was a deep molasses brown. Its texture was distinctly moist and light. We would describe it as gooey; it gave us a festive Christmas pudding vibe. Its aroma was rife with pumpkin pie spices. Its flavor was pumpkin and spice-forward and not cloyingly sweet. We were enamored with this bread.

We shouldn't be surprised that Pillsbury was near the top of our list. The company has been producing quality baking mixes for decades, and it is considered one of the most loved brands by millennials, according to Business Insider. There is a reason it enjoys this reputation. The products are reliable, affordable, and convenient — they also taste great.

The batter required only water, oil, and eggs. Once the batter was mixed, we were about to pop it into the oven — along with the other loaves we were baking — when we noticed this was the only mix that needed to be baked at 375 degrees. All the others were baked at 350 degrees. Being savvy bakers, we knew this would not be an issue. The bread might take a few minutes longer to be fully set, but that would not impact the final product. It ended up only taking 55 minutes to bake.

Where this bread shone was its texture. It was fluffier than many others while being incredibly moist and bouncy. The aroma was very spice-forward, and the flavor was redolent of cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. It was sweet but did not overwhelm the spices or the pumpkin. Our only hesitation about this bread is its use of yellow 5 and red 40. While they are legal in the United States, they are associated with a few different health concerns. Otherwise, we would wholeheartedly recommend this mix.

The winner of best in show for store-bought pumpkin bread mixes is the regular King Arthur Baking Company's Pumpkin Spice Muffin & Quick Bread Mix. Unlike its gluten-free flour, we have had fantastic luck using normal King Arthur flour. It is always consistent, so we expected nothing less from this mix.

All it required to assemble was oil, water, and eggs. Please note: the instructions call for a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan. Most of the other mixes we tried gave instructions for an 8 by 4-inch pan. This threw us for a loop, and we accidentally used the smaller pan, which overflowed in the oven. This did not impact the quality of the bread, but you should be aware of it. It's also a great reminder to read the instructions thoroughly before baking. The bread took a full 65 minutes to bake.

The finished product was nothing short of perfection. It had a luscious, uniform, and pliable texture. The aroma of pumpkin spice immediately clobbers you over the head when you cut into the loaf. Its flavor does not disappoint. This had the spiciness we had been seeking in every other mix. It was bold and didn't try to hide behind too much sugar. We also appreciated the simplicity of the ingredients in this mix. This mix stole the show.