Green Tea and Candied Orange Peel Bread

 

 The March Kitchen of the Month is Cathy from Bread Experience.  Cathy’s choice was a lovely bread flavored with matcha tea and candied orange peel. 

I already had matcha tea, and, even though I used the indicated amount, the bread wasn’t green, but the color of rye bread. (So much more appealing than gray.)  I did add the matcha to the dry ingredients to make sure it was well incorporated.

The candied orange peel was another story, but a good one.  As I wondered where I would find this ingredient, I realized there was a fresh orange on my counter, and several more in the refrigerator, so I decided to make my own candied orange peel.

First, a story about the oranges.  The single orange on the counter was rescued from the clutches of a sneaky rat.  I planted a naval orange tree in 2019, and was very excited to see it produce one orange that first year!  I watched it carefully; then, one day in January of 2020, I decided to see if it was ready to harvest.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was just a hollow shell!  The crafty rodent had breached the orange from the backside, and consumed it all, leaving only the shell that, for all intents and purposes, looked like an in-tact orange.   Grumble, grumble.  By the end of 2020, my little tree had two (!) oranges underway, and I vowed I wouldn’t let the rat beat me to them.  So, come January 2021, I was checking them multiple times a day for any sign of rodent activity.  I decided to harvest the best looking one, and not a moment too soon.  The next day, the second orange had succumbed to the rat attack.  So, there the orange sat, waiting for me to figure out how to eat it.  (Glad I procrastinated.)

The second group of oranges came from my former tree.  At my previous house, I had planted a blood orange tree, and after what seemed like an eternity it started to produce fruit.  And then I moved.  Luckily, the new owners are wonderful people, and every year they share the oranges with my former neighbor, who, in turn, shares them with me. 

I realized that making candied orange peel was the perfect use for all of my oranges. I combined recipes from two sources:  Alton Brown and Use Real Butter (Jen Yu).   And I made just enough for the recipe so I wouldn’t have leftovers.  (I did taste a few to make sure they were good enough, so making just enough was a wise decision.)

 This bread recipe makes four perfectly-sized small loaves.  While I thought about putting a few in the freezer, or sharing them, it wasn’t to be.  They are that delicious.

 The other Babes made amazing bread, so stop by their websites.  And, if you want to bake along as a Buddy, you can find the recipe on Cathy’s blog.  Send her a write-up and photos by March 29 to be included in the roundup.

 

Check out the other Bread Baking Babes:

• Blog from OUR Kitchen – Elizabeth 
• Karen’s Kitchen Stories – Karen
  
• A Messy Kitchen – Kelly
• My Diverse Kitchen – Aparna 
• Bread Experience – Cathy (Kitchen of the Month)
• Thyme for Cooking - Katie
• My Kitchen in Half Cups – Tanna  
• Feeding My Enthusiasms – Elle