Picnic Bread (From South Africa)

Zurie's Note:

This is the perfect road food, fisherman's lunch, school lunch bread, breakfast ... I can't be without this recipe, given to me long ago by a friend. It definitely does not need butter -- just slice and eat. Please note that this does not pretend to be a low-fat recipe! It is meant for long days away from home, when one slice means sustenance.

• Total Time: 1 hrs 25 mins
• Prep Time: 25 mins
• Cook Time: 1 hrs

Ingredients:

Servings: 8

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder (not soda)
• 1 cup chopped spring onion
• 3 cups coarsely grated cheddar cheese
• 1 lb fairly lean bacon, chopped into smallish pieces (2 packets)
• 8 large eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons seasoning salt, such as aromat
• fresh coarse ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon chili sauce
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 cup buttermilk

Directions:

1. Set oven on 350 deg F.
2. Grease well 2 fairly small bread tins.
3. Mix all the ingredients except the buttermilk. DO NOT fry the bacon: it goes in raw, chopped: it cooks in the baking process and adds to the flavour.
4. Add JUST enough buttermilk to make a soft, almost sticky dough, as for scones. You may not even need the buttermilk, as the consistency will also depend on the size of the eggs used.
5. Divide batter between the 2 tins.
6. Bake about 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until a skewer comes out clean. Turn out and cool on a rack.
7. It's going to be difficult to guess the servings, as the bread is rich and filling. When cool, wrap in foil and keep at room temperature or in fridge overnight (assuming you're going to use it on a trip of for school the next day).
8. It freezes well.

Reviews

[Mike McCartney]

I wish I could give it 10 stars! This is now my favorite bread. I did everything as directed except I didn't add any pepper. Like others I needed much less buttermilk than called for (I used about 3/4 cup). One word of warning, for the first set of loafs I used glass loaf pans and the results were not good. They stuck to the pans even though they were well greased, and the texture was just off. The next set I made with metal loaf pans and the results were perfect. I will be making many, many more of these. A hundred thanks for the great recipe.

[Akikobay]

Wow. These were astonishingly yummy. I had to make a few changes because I didn't plan well to make this recipe. The only major change I made was to use egg beaters (not because I was worried about the cholesterol with all the bacon) since I ran out of eggs. I also cut the salt to 1 tsp, omitted the butter (I forgot it) and the chili sauce. I baked them in muffin cups to help control portion size and they baked in about 30 minutes to a perfect golden brown. My yield was 30 standard sized muffins. Thank you so much for posting this Zurie. We'll be making this often.

[3isles]

Well even though I didn't have the right sized pans - (had to use mini loaf pans) I didn't have any cream so used buttermilk (its all I had) and forgot the part about only adding enough buttermilk to make soft dough...I added it all - definitely not like any kind of dough (doh! hahaha) AND it still came out delicious, ds ate 3 mini loaves for lunch. It has to be a great recipe if it can endure so many errors and still be so yummy. Thank you so much for sharing this.