Lembas Bread Inspired by the Lord of the Rings – Fantasy Inspired Cooking

Lembas Bread in a bowl next to some wrapped in paper

Join our Patreon

Join The Regulars and receive exclusive perks by supporting our inn! Get early access to our videos, vote on what we make next, exclusive QnA livestreams and behind the scenes content, and store discounts!

Join our Discord

Join our adventuring family!

Lembas Bread Inspired by Lord of the Rings - Fantasy Inspired Cooking

This focaccia style bread features a wonderful crisp, with flavors of basil and honey reminiscent of its fantastical Elven origins! Perfect for movie night or your next Dungeons and Dragons session!
Course Appetizer, Side Dish, Snack
Cuisine Elven, Italian
Keyword basil, bread, Elven, hobbit, honey, lembas, lord of the rings, lotr
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Rising time 2 hours
Total Time 2 hours 55 minutes
Servings 8 hobbits
Calories 160kcal
Author TheEverhearthInn
Cost 7 gold

Equipment

  • Baking sheet
  • Electric Mixer optional
  • Mixing bowl
  • Wooden Spoon
  • Parchment paper or brown paper bags optional, for packaging/presentation

Ingredients

  • 1 ¾ cup flour
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 2 tsp sugar
  • 1 packet active dry yeast
  • 2 tsp fine salt
  • 2 tbsp honey plus more for topping
  • 3 tbsp fresh basil chopped
  • 3 tbsp olive oil for baking
  • 1 tsp flakey salt

Instructions

  • In your mixing bowl, thoroughly mix your water, honey, and sugar, then sprinkle the yeast on top and let sit for 15 minutes to fully activate.
  • Separately, mix the flour, salt, and basil.
  • Once the yeast is ready, slowly mix in your flour mix into the water mix while continuing to stir for about 10 minutes until a thick sticky dough forms. Cover and let rest for 15 minutes. It will seem more liquid than you expect from a traditional dough.
  • Grease your baking sheet with olive oil, then also cooking spray (this oil helps give a crispy bottom to the bread.) Pour the dough into the sheet but don't touch it at all.
  • Drizzle olive oil over the top of the dough, then score it slightly in a diagonal patter with a knife. Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for about 2 hours. We recommend warming your oven to 200°F (93°C), then turning it off and putting your dough in and closing the oven door to let it rise in a warm environment.
  • Remove the dough from the oven, remove the plastic wrap, preheat your oven to 375°F (190°C), and bake for 20 minutes. Once twenty minutes is up keep the oven on and check on the bread every two minutes. You are looking for the center to be fully set and the edges to be golden brown, then you can take it out. For us it took about 26 minutes total.
  • Let the bread rest for at least 15 minutes then top with a drizzle of honey and flakey salt.
  • Chop up into squares, we suggest 8, and serve to hungry hobbits! We topped ours with some butter to make a sort of improvised honey butter that turned out fantastic!

Notes

We loved this recipe! It turned out great and was a great new type of bread for us to experiment with. We were worried about the dough seeming more liquid than we expected, but that must be how focaccia behaves! We're novice bakers and were thoroughly pleased with our results. The basil and honey were a wonderful and unique pairing that created a herby sweetness that really tasted like what we'd expect Elven food to taste like. This is great for your next time bingeing Lord of the Rings or your next Dungeons and Dragons game!

Shop at The Armory

More From The Kitchen

Share this post:

4 thoughts on “Lembas Bread Inspired by the Lord of the Rings – Fantasy Inspired Cooking”

  1. Hi! Thanks for posting this, it looks delicious!

    Sadly could not replicate it, when adding the yeast/water mix to the flour the end result looks like a soup and not a dough. Is the ratio of 1 3/4 cup to 1 cup yeast/water accurate? I went as slow as I could in the mixing process and it ended up this way.

    Sorry, beginner baker here. Any tips?

    1. The recipe is based off a foccacia bread, which is generally very wet and sticky compared to a traditional bread recipe. If your bread is too liquidy though, I would suggest adding in more flour. Add slowly and mix until it reaches the desired consistency

      1. I’m about to make this recipe for a LOTR marathon. And there’s 9 of us so I was just thinking of doubling the recipe. I was wondering what exact pan sheet size do you recommend for the recipe without doubling it. This is my first attempt at any bread recipe. I just don’t want the dough to be in a too big or small in the pan. We have I think 16×22 size pans. So I’m not sure if that’s too big or small for one batch. Or perfect for the double batch.
        Sorry I’m new newb with bread and I don’t want to mess it up lol or if anything thick should the dough look once in the pan. Under an inch or more?

        1. I used a 9×13 inch pan for this amount of dough, a 16×22 might be a bit large for even a double batch, you could try to section off a bit of it with aluminum foil! This is a foccacia-style bread so the bread itself is pretty liquidy and will settle to whatever size pan its given

Comments are closed.