At first, I just wanted a bread recipe that I could bake with our quail eggs. The recipe has evolved, and it’s tasty!
In order to have the perfect bread for my market stand, the recipe had to call for eggs. I planned to sub quail eggs for chicken eggs. I found one, and it was good. It rose and sliced nicely, and it was versatile. but I wanted it to taste even better.
Coconut milk. This was the answer. One answer. It tasted lovely along with Irish butter, which has more butterfat than regular butter. It has a much richer taste. And one more thing: honey.
I hadn’t planned on taking any honey from either of my hives this year, as it’s been an interesting summer. I used honey from elsewhere in my bread. Tasty! But it didn’t reflect every aspect of our micro-homestead.
At the last minute, I discovered that we do, indeed, have honey from one of the hives this year. It’s heavenly. It’s lighter-colored than normal. Sweeter, too, than the almost cinnamon-flavored honey my bees normally produce. And it is perfect in the bread.
The bread has the right amount of spring, chew and crust, and I always make it the day before market day. The one-pound loaves are fresh. It keeps well in the freezer, if it can’t be eaten within a day or two.
There are no preservatives in it. And a final thing I looked at was what I used to grease the pan. I used shortening for years to grease pans for nearly everything. A fellow marketer and market baker asked about shortening, shortening ingredients, and label requirements. This got me wondering if I could simplify ingredients, and sub something healthier for the shortening. The answer was yes. I was able to switch to grapeseed oil right away. I had been using it in the bowl for the first rise already, so it eliminated one ingredient. Or several, due to the nature of shortening.
The bread can be used for everything from sweet to savory, sandwiches to toast.
For me, market days are soon coming to an end for the year. My hens are slowing down for their winter rest. I’ll have bread at my stand tomorrow, October 7th, at the highway 12 market in Willmar. I will be set up from 8 to noon. I am hoping to have some at the midweek market behind the Kandi mall on the 11th, where I will be set up from 11 to 3 (note the time difference from when the market closes). Beyond this, feel free to contact me to order some for convenient curbside pickup in Willmar.
