Bread and Lamb Breast

We hosted Lords Day, not too long back and decided to try making the bread from fresh ground flour.

It takes about 15 minutes to grind enough flour for a large loaf of chala bread.

Adam had it mostly done before I even got inside, but his comment was, “that’s good cardio! That’s a bunch of muscles I don’t usually use.”

We should’ve taken pictures of the bread, baking process, and the finish result, but we did not. Next time. You’ll just have to trust us for now that it was delicious. The biggest difference between baking with fresh ground flour and baking with store-bought flour, is the texture. The fresh ground flour is a bit coarser, and much stickier.

I was fortunate enough to get a picture of the best part of the whole meal,

Look at that! Oh my goodness, that is beautiful!

And the grilled lamb isn’t bad either.

I reserved the boneless lamb breast roll for the next day, Sunday morning. It’s basically the same as pork belly, but from a lamb instead of a pig. I found a recipe on a British cooking webpage, but I can’t remember where that was now. I did not follow up precisely because we had to get ready for Mass.

I was a little worried there wouldn’t be enough because it was such a small cut, about a pound and a half. First I unenrolled it, and laid it out skin side down, then rubbed the inside generously with rosemary, thyme, and black pepper. Could afford to be a little less generous with the rosemary, in future.

Then I rolled it back up as tightly as I could, and snug it up with a butchers wrap. I used the purple quilting thread from Ellie’s quilting project, because that was all I had to hand. It worked just fine then lightly rubbed the outside with coarse sea salt, and left it in the fridge for 24 hours.

Sunday morning, before mass, I seared all sides of it in butter, a hot quick one to two minute sear. Then popped to dinner roaster and poured a bottle of (cheap) red wine around it, and slid it into the oven at 275 right before we left for Mass.

When we got home three hours later it was beautifully roasted so I just rolled it to coat the remaining side and let it sit in the hot pan for 30 or 40 minutes.

Took it out, cut the string and unwrapped it and it stayed together just like it was supposed to.

This is what it looked like, sliced into medallions.

I was amazed at how filling it was, I could only eat four or five of the medallions. Two rolls would probably have been enough for a full family dinner. Definitely something to remember next time we butcher sheep, this is a very easy and tasty recipe, so the boneless Lamb breast is a sustain.

 Monday morning, got started with the bread, baking extra early, because I wanted to make G’Pa Pelicano‘s pumpernickel bread. Haven’t made it in a while, but it came out just like it was supposed to.

Then for sandwich bread, we threw together a quick whole wheat bannock.

You might say our bread making was pretty enterprising that day.