As the harvest season rolls in with this turn of the Wheel of the Year, bake the last weeks of the season into a fresh, sun-warmed loaf!
(Please note: This post contains affiliate links. You’re welcome to read all about this practice on Moody Moon’s disclosure page. Spoiler alert: It’s pretty boring.)
I love picking out herbs for the Lammas bread. Almost any common garden herb will add something special to this bread, so pick something to suit your purpose (sage for wisdom, basil for love, ect).
Lammas Bread Man
You can even make the creative process of kneading the bread a ritual in and of itself. For more on how to do this, check out Baking the Lammas Bread.
Of all the herbs I tried, sage was the easiest to work with. Cilantro was the hardest. The stiffer the leaf, the easier it is to maintain its shape when you transfer it to the bread.
Mix warm water with yeast and sugar. Stir thoroughly. Allow the yeast to “activate” by leaving it to bubble, about 10 minutes.
Bread & Salt
Add olive oil to wet ingredients. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet until mixture is no longer sticky. Knead the dough until it stretches.
Cover the bread with a clean towel. Leave it in a sunny window and allow it to rise until it doubles in size (about 1 hour).
While bread is baking, bring a small pot of water to boil. Fill another bowl with ice water. Dip fresh herbs in boiling water for 5-10 seconds. Then dip them in ice water. Lay them flat on paper towels and put more paper towels on top. Press with a heavy skillet.
Lammas/lughnasadh Bread Recipe
About 3 minutes before the bread is fully cooked (just beginning to brown, but still looks raw) pull them out of the oven. Brush the tops with egg whites. Working carefully, arrange blanched herbs on top of the egg whites on the bread, then brush more egg whites on top to “seal” them in.This post contains affiliate links meaning that I may make a small commission based off of your purchase at no additional cost to you.
Celebrate an abundant harvest with a sourdough braided bread loaf, enriched with vibrant calendula and rich sunflowers. This Lammas bread is perfect for a summer celebration or to be enjoyed anytime of year. Learn about how to braid bread and take a peek into Lammas tradition.
I live along the edges of a fertile river valley. The countryside is painted in broad swaths of grain – wheat, barley, rye, and corn. Each summer, around the first of August, the wheat fields mature to a rich golden tone, signalling the harvest.
The Culinary Traditions Of Lammas
Living in this valley, and having spent most of my life at least on the peripheral, if not completely immersed in the agricultural community, I have always been incredibly aware of the how our lives are lived in concert with nature. We work
. Despite farming advances, we are still very much at nature’s mercy. I have never known a farmer to got give thanks and celebrate his or her harvest.
Just like the Celtic people of bygone days (or less bygone if your culture guides you to it), we may all find ourselves celebrating Lammas, the ancient celebration of the first grain harvest of the year. Perhaps our Lammas celebrations look more like backyard BBQs and potlucks, but we are celebrating the height of summer. I say this not to oversimplify Lammas, but rather to illustrate the point that we do celebrate the seasons, albeit less intentionally than our ancestors and pagan kin and neighbors. During the summer months, we are celebrating abundance grown from the earth by eating vine ripened tomatoes, still warm from the sun, and corn on the cob, slathered with butter. We celebrate in those moments when we are keenly aware of bounty that nature offers.
Sourdough Braided Bread With Calendula & Sunflowers For Lammas
I am not pagan, but I value the celebrations that punctuate the wheel of the year. I see the vast similarities in modern culture. We carve faces into pumpkins, once turnips, in October, we light candles to light the darkness in February (Imbolc), and even my Christian Nebraskan grandmother was proclaimed May Queen in her youth (Beltane). I am finding that here in early “mid-life” I greatly desire to slow down and appreciate the world around me right as it is, right now. I feel called to understand the culture of my ancestors and live more closely in tune with the cycles of the earth.
Moved by the concepts within the ancient calendar that guide us to be more in tune with the cycles of the earth, I created this loaf of Lammas bread to connect me with this Old World tradition.
Lammas, also referred to as Lughnasadh, is the first of three celebrations that focus on the harvest. Translating literally to “loaf-mass”, Lammas celebrates that harvest of grain, and as such tradition calls for a Lammas bread (which for me will be a braided bread). More than a celebration of grain, Lammas represents the seed cycle, a highlights that efforts put forth by the farmers to feed their family and community throughout the year. In older days, the first sheath of wheat would be cut at dawn on the morning of Lammas, winnowed, ground and baked into a loaf on the first day of harvest (and the last sheath would be hung in the home to welcome future harvest). Lammas not only celebrates the current year’s harvest, but blesses the future crops to be grown from the collected seed.
Leftover Beer Bread
I have a couple other post loosely based on the wheel of the year celebrations. Take a peak at this corn dolly tutorial and this hawthorn infused apple cider.
While my Lammas bread will not be created with the first grains of the season, this breaded bread was made in honor the tradition and abundance of the season. Your Lammas bread should be representative of your harvest – so while the list mentioned above provides suggestions, a modern Lammas loaf may look different for you and the your regional herbs, flowers, seeds, and grains. I encourage you to enrich your bread with what feels celebratory and in season to you each year. My braided bread is enriched with vibrant calendula petals from my herb garden and oil rich sunflowers (both atop and in the loaf). I chose the braided bread design to resemble the seed head that tops each sheath of wheat and to pay homage to braided strands of wheat.
While the base recipe for this Lammas bread is a simple everyday ingredients, it is form and the added ingredients that turn this braided bread into something festive.
Elven Lembas Bread Recipe Archives
Like a great many others, I too have found that a true, homemade sourdough bread, made with a traditional starter culture, to be a far more digestible compared to supermarket breads. After a baking “dry spell”, I created my own starter culture using the methods explained by my friend Courtney Queen of ButterforAll.com in this post. I most certainly could have detailed my methods in this post, but when somebody like Courtney goes in to the depth and detail — I would rather send you to the master for your sourdough training. 🙂
What is impressive on the plate, is surprisingly easy to create. If you know who to braid, you can craft a braided bread loaf. The only major difference being that you don’t braid from one end to the other. Instead you start at a center point and braid to one end, then braid from the center out to the other end, then tuck under the ends when placing in its buttered baking dish for a second rise. It is far easier than it sounds, and even this uncoordinated baker made a lovely braided bread upon her first attempt — I have faith in you!
Celebrate an abundant harvest with a sourdough braided bread loaf, enriched with vibrant calendula and rich sunflowers. This lammas bread is perfect for a summer celebration or to be enjoyed anytime of year.
Celtic Knot Bread Lammas Recipe With Herbs & Cheese
Devon is a writer and author on subjects of holistic and sustainable living. She has a degree in Complementary and Alternative Medicine from the American College of Healthcare Sciences, and her first book, The Backyard Herbal Apothecary, was published by Page Street Publishing in Spring 2019. Devon's work outside of can be seen at LearningHerbs.com, GrowForageCookFerment.com, AttainableSustainable.net, and in the magazine The Backwoods Home. Devon's second book, The Herbalist's Healing Kitchen, will be published Fall 2019.
I am an herbalist, farmer, cook, and forager. I get my hands dirty and am not afraid to do things the hard way. Sharing my Nitty Gritty Life with you! Read MoreThis one incorporates fresh, late-summer herbs from the garden, farm-raised eggs and rich, hand-whipped butter for a flaky, moist, pull-apart style bread.
What’s the difference between a mundane cooking session and the magical art of the kitchen witch? Staying mindful of the meaning of the ingredients and the symbolic nature of the process elevates any culinary experiment to a mystical experience.
Lammas Bread Spell: Recipe For Success
One of the oldest and most universal symbols in indigenous art, the spiral appears
0 Komentar