St Lucia Bread

On this feast day we have tried some other recipe's and I know that everyone has their favourite but we just use this same recipe for so many sweet breads and it is always great and always turns out. I have never had a failure and have used it for over a dozen years.

This recipe gives two very large crown shaped breads, the original was 1/2 of this but we always double it for anything:

Ingredients ~
580ml of water
2 eggs
4 Tbs of butter or oil (I use oil)
2 Tsp of salt
4 Tbs of sugar
7 cups of Bread flour
6 Tbs of milk powder 4Tsp Bread improver
5 Tsp yeast
Fruit for the dough

Method ~
Put everything into a bowl and knead either by hand or mixer until ready.
Turn out onto lightly floured surface and continue kneading for a very short while.
Divide into 3 parts and roll out into 'snake' lengths.
Plait together and place onto a greased tray forming a circle shape.

We then put ours into plastic shopping bags and put it them on the shelf above the stove till they double in size. This is a great place for lots of rising of bread products, not to mention drying of shoes etc. We have a wood burning stove we use all year round, I actually don't have any other stove at all to use, no gas or electric. The girls have really learnt to cook on this and can't imagine using any other type of stove ☺

This is actually a double recipe as we love it and when I suggested we make just the single recipe the children complained suggested it would be a better idea to use the double one so we could have some the next day.

They were a little lopsided in the cooking process. I actually think the tray's aren't big enough as they kind of get caught on the sides and the side of the oven.

For our frosting I try to keep it simple!
We like a lot of frosting on ours so I just heap a pile of Icing Mixture into a bowl and add water till I am happy with the consistency. Then just pour it on top.
Our favourite part is to add chopped up apricots on top, as we really don't like the citrus flavour of most St Lucia breads. The apricots give a lovely tangy flavour to the sweetness of the icing.

Need I say that one isn't enough and that by today we had none left...much to Stephen's disappointment when asking for some tonight.

Our beautiful Eden as St Lucia

Vellvin is so sweet as St Lucia too.

Ta da....the breads all ready to be eaten by the hungry hordes after our Festival of Lights ceremony.

I am still working on that blog post as well as our round up of St Lucia for this year and Our Lady of Guadalupe for this year as well. Also because sometimes I do things backwards due to running out of time I will hopefully get my Plans for St Lucia posted too (late again, but ready for next year)


I pray you are all enjoying the gradual process of preparing for the coming of The Lord this Advent.

Blessings to you and your homes,