Recipe: Sally Lunn Batter Bread*

I was thinking today about making homemade bread--but then I thought better of it.  First, I don’t really have time, and second, if I make it I will eat it.  All of it.  OK, that’s not true.  My husband and son will definitely eat more than their share and more than should really be allowed by law.   None of us can resist homemade bread—especially cinnamon bread.  But I digress.  What I want to say is that you can make bread, right now, today, with just your electric mixer and a Bundt pan.  It’s an old recipe called Sally Lunn Batter Bread.  One legend has it that Solange Luyon (anglicized to Sally Lunn), a French Protestant, left her native land to settle in England’s West Country, where she sold her rich, buttery bread in the streets of Bath.  Sally Lunn bread is traditionally made in a round shape, served hot from the oven with honey butter.  You don’t have to knead it, and all the little (and big) faces you feed will light up with joy when they come home to the smell of fresh bread wafting from the oven.  You can find the simple instructions below.  But first, a funny story from my personal childhood collection.

When I was a little girl about eight years old, my mother said one day, “I would just love to wake up to the smell of baking bread!”  She looked so wistful, that I vowed then and there I would make her dream come true.  I saw my chance the very next Sunday afternoon when my parents were taking an afternoon nap.  I found Mom’s bread recipe in her box, and started getting out the ingredients. Flour, shortening, milk, sugar, salt, and yeast.  It seemed simple enough—except the yeast.  I wasn’t sure what that was, so I decided I didn’t really need it.  I proceeded to mix up the other ingredients in Mom’s big Pyrex bowl.  The recipe said to knead the dough.  I knew that was something you did with your hands but wasn’t sure exactly what, so I skipped that part too.  After stirring for awhile, the dough looked somewhat like very thick and lumpy Elmer’s glue.  So far so good! I poured it into Mom’s two big bread pans and turned on the oven.  Although I worried it didn’t look quite right, I figured the oven would do its magic and all would be well.  I sat on a chair in front of the oven to wait.  About a half hour later, Mom wandered out of her bedroom with a startled look on her face.  She had indeed smelled something cooking, but I was surprised to see that she didn’t seem grateful, or even particularly happy as she stared in amazement at the flour covered kitchen and dirty dishes in the sink.  We opened the oven together, and to my disappointment the bread looked like 2 large flat bricks, which I then spent the next half hour scraping into the outside garbage can with a spatula.  Mom wasn’t mad at me, and once we cleaned things up she had an amusing anecdote to tell her friends.  And now, many years and many successful baking escapades later (some of which have involved bread warm from the oven), I think I’ve made it up to her.

1 pkg active dry yeast (or 2 ½ teaspoons)

½ cup warm water

1 cup warm milk

½ cup butter, softened

¼ cup sugar

2 teaspoons salt

3 eggs

5 1/2 to 6 cups flour

In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water.  Let stand about five minutes.  Add the milk, butter, sugar, salt, eggs and 3 cups of the flour.  Beat until smooth.  Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough.  (Do not knead).   Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Stir the dough down.  Spoon into a well greased and floured bundt pan.  Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.  Bake at 400 for 25 to 30 min or until golden brown.  Remove from pan to a wire rack.

Cut with a bread knife or electric knife and serve while still warm.

HONEY BUTTER

To make honey butter, beat ½ cup softened butter with 1 cup honey.  I like this butter-honey ratio because it goes further with less fat, but if you like your honey butter to be more pale in color and buttery (the traditional way), then use ½ cup butter to ½ cup honey (of course this can be made in any proportion, same amount of butter as honey).

*Originally distributed February 2014