home tutorials recipes aprons/patterns Soaps

Monday, March 17, 2008

What's in Your Easter Basket?

I went out to share some day old bread with my chickens today and brought in a little bundle of warm, wonderful, colorful eggs.
My Easter Basket
If you look carefully you can see that the one at the bottom right is green! I am so excited.
Bryan bought several colored egg layers last year and they are finally laying a basket of colored eggs for us. The egg in the center isn't white but next to the others it sure looks white. We do have a couple of white egg layers in the bunch too. The yolks of these eggs are simply gorgeous. They are almost orange they are so dark. I made vanilla ice cream yesterday with fresh eggs and fresh milk from the cow and it was golden yellow in color and OH MY GOODNESS was it tasty.
Here are my Fine Hens.
My helpers

I had to add this to my cornucopia of farmy goodness.
Bread n' Butter
I just made our first batch of butter for this Spring. It is so tasty on the fresh whole wheat bread I made last night.
Here's the bread recipe.

Farm Fresh Bread

6 cups hot milk (heat on the stove)
4 Tbsp yeast
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup honey
6 eggs (I actually used duck eggs)
6 tsp salt
3/4 cup ground flax seed
1 1/2 cups old fashion rolled oats
16-18 cups fresh ground whole wheat flour (I use hard white wheat but red is good too.)

Mix everything together and kneed until the dough is pulling away from the sides of the bowl. The dough might be a bit sticky.
Cover and let rise for an hour in a warm place. (I always keep checking on it and punch it down and flip it around at this stage, I just can't leave it alone.)
Punch the dough down again and divide into 6 loaves. Place in greased bread pans.

Bake at 400 deg F for about 25 minutes. If you are using glass or stoneware pans you might have to add 5 more minutes or so. I usually use metal pans.

This is a large batch so I usually freeze a lot of it and take out the loaves as we need them. This reduces the number of times I have to bake bread in a week.

13 comments:

Marylois said...

very nice looking eggs, and nothing tastes better than the heel fresh from the oven dripping with butter unless maybe you were to add a little honey :D

Jeanne said...

Lucy do you have a cow now that we don't know about?

Lucy said...

I must. hee hee

Danetta said...

Lucy you just amaze me. I can just smell that butter right now...mmmmmmm

Liz said...

Everything looks delicious...

Tracey said...

I swear brown eggs taste better than white ones. My husband says they are the same nutrionally but I still stand firm in my opinion!!

Lucy said...

Well I don't know which one tates better but I do know that farm fresh eggs have the pale store eggs beat any day.

Anonymous said...

nice eggs. i love farm fresh eggs!

Emily Cole said...

Wow, I am SOOOOOO Jealous! I am trying So hard to get my DH to allow me to have some laying hens... no luck so far. (We live in a town that would require a permit and permission from all neighbors within 500 feet!) I love this post - the bread looks really great, and YUM - fresh butter! Man - can I come visit for a while? Em

Linnea said...

I can;t wait to move and hopefully get a few hens! Those eggs are beautiful and hens are so pretty and happy looking!
I have been wanting to try my hand at some homemade bread. I am going to give your recipe a go next week, Thanks!

The Apron Queen said...

I'm officially jealous! :D

Stop by sometime. I'll fix you a glass of iced tea & you can put your feet up. :D

Confessions of an Apron Queen: http://anapronaday.blogspot.com

Bee Haven Bev said...

You have lovely hens!!!

Inn-Photo said...

Lucy, this bread looks amazing and I would love to try it! What kind of yeast do you use? Im new to bread making so still getting my feet wet. Your butter looks amazing as well!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...