Situate a rack in the very bottom of the oven & heat the oven to 350 degrees F. If you aren’t leaving the top on your pumpkin (I do leave it on as I love the drama of it), then you can situate your rack in the middle of the oven.

To bake the pumpkin, you can use either a pie plate (I use my favorite vintage, tin pie plate), a baking sheet, or a dutch oven or other oven proof pot (a cast iron skillet would work well). I very lightly grease the bottom to prevent the base from sticking. While it’s easier to remove it from your baking dish to a plate on a baking sheet, the pumpkin is quite soft and my preference it to serve it straight from the baking dish set on a nice trivet.

Using a very sturdy knife or, even better, one of those little saws that comes in a pumpkin carving, carefully cut a circle out of the top of the pumpkin like pictured above. Cut at an angle so that the top will set back into the pumpkin and make the circle big enough that you can get in there with a spoon and scoop out all the pulp and seeds.

Scrape your pumpkin quite clean of all the stringy bits (a metal spoon works well) and then season the entirety of the inside with salt and pepper. Don’t be shy with it either. I love to save the seeds for roasting with rosemary, brown butter, and sea salt.

In a large mixing bowl combine the bread, cheese, apple, garlic, shallot, bacon, thyme, and nutmeg together in a bowl. Season with a few cracks of pepper and a three-finger pinch of flaky salt. Stir to combine. Pour the cream over the mixture and stir again to combine well and make sure the mixture is evenly wet. It should be moist but not drippy. If it seems at all dry, add a smidge more cream and pack the mix into the pumpkin. The pumpkin should be filled to the top. If you have too much, either discard it or save it to stuff a smaller gourd or even a pepper.

Put the cap in place and bake the pumpkin for about 2 hours—check after one and a half hours—or until the pumpkin is fork tender.

When the pumpkin is cooked through, carefully remove it from the oven. If you would like to remove it from the sheet you baked it on, I find avery large spatula or (even better) a cake mover is idea for the job. But I prefer to not risk it and serve it straight out & piping hot so that the cheese is still nice and melty.

To serve, cut the pumpkin into wedges and make sure you get plenty of filling with each slice. Alternately, you can scoop filling and pumpkin flesh out with a spoon and serve it that way, but I love the way the slices look on a plate.

carefully, very carefully—it’s heavy, hot, and wobbly—bring it to the table or transfer it to a platter that you’ll bring to the table. It makes a fantastic centerpiece at any fall meal, and a different, welcome addition to either your Halloween or Thanksgiving table. The visual can’t really be overstated. Nor the sheer deliciousness of the hot filling.

While I’ve never tried it, the original recipe that this is adapted from suggest varying your filling with rice or another cooked grain (I’d love to try it with my favorite whole grain, farro). So have fun with it, so long as the filling is moist and flavorful, you’re sure to have a delicious pumpkin.