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!
Servings 8 hobbits
Calories 160kcal
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!