Honey Egg Bread

We recently had a surplus of eggs and we need to find ways on how to use them before they go bad. Our chickens are really prolific layers that their eggs can't even fit anymore in our fridge for storage. We made the usual, salted eggs and flan (with whole eggs) but there are still many left and more are added each day. We made egg salad with about three dozen eggs but there were still seven remaining. I think this is the perfect time for me to try an egg bread and make an experiment.

This bread stays true to its name. Aside from flour, salt and yeast; it only contains egg and honey for the liquid, no milk, butter or oil! You can clearly see the liquid components in this shot!



Most egg bread recipes I saw contains either butter or oil and one to a few eggs and mostly water to a relatively large amount of flour. Well, I don't think adding a single egg will merit to be named egg bread and adding butter mocks the eggs enriching ability.  Most of  egg bread's richness comes from the egg yolks so some recipes call for eggs and some extra yolks. I really hate to go to the trouble of separating eggs and then finding a use for the leftover whites so this brain of my mine come up with  a solution unexpectedly, keep the yolks the same and use the whites as a replacement for the water. Genius! No separating, storing or wasting whites so I experimented to see if using eggs alone with honey for flavor will make a great egg bread.

This bread has the most difficult to knead dough to date. If you saw the dough in the beginning I bet you would be skeptical too if this will come together without the addition of any more flour but I trusted my hand kneading skill and proceeded to knead the "porridge" oh I mean dough. It contains 7 bantam eggs which is equivalent to 4-4.5 normal eggs and quite a bit of honey so it's really rich, its like a leavened pasta dough.  It took me a good hour and a quarter for it to reach windowpane. It then goes to my standard procedure of a cold overnight rise.



The next day I saw that it did not rise as much unlike most breads I made but I proceeded anyway. I shaped it into snails and proofed it in my llaneras for a bit, it did not expand very well too. You can see in the photo there's not much difference in size.



They were then glazed with egg wash before being baked in the preheated clay pot for 20 minutes. I changed my timing to avoid burnt spots. The first 5 minutes with live fire and the rest just embers.



Here are the results. In fact the tops look just like they were not egg washed and look very similar to supermarket rolls just shaped differently; of course the difference in quality is very huge.

I can say they have a slight resemblance to kaiser rolls. 

The tops are not as browned as my previous bakes but the burnt spots on the bottoms were significantly reduced.





The aroma was unbelievable while they were cooling. The tops are soft with thin crust and the bottom is slightly crisp. The crumb is slightly dry but still soft and a bit difficult to cut (maybe it's just because of the absence of a good serrated knife). They are not delicate or feathery like a challah or a brioche but they are super rich tasting. It is lightly sweet and the aroma of honey is dominant along with a pleasant "eggy" flavor. They are flavorful enough to be eaten on their own. Their hearty nature is perfect for saucy fillings, I think I'll like them with ice cream sandwiches, brioche are more likely to go soggy just after a few seconds of putting ice cream and soggy bread is one of my most disliked food items that I cannot imagine eating bread sauce; sorry if I offended anyone. 



I serve them as egg salad sandwiches to make a triple egg delight, perhaps the only thing left to be made with our chicken eggs is the mayonnaise for the egg salad but since they're not as fresh as ideal I didn't risk it. They were so delicious and even after 5 days, they were still soft and the texture hasn't changed.

Thank you very much and Happy Baking!  Job