Marquette Baking Company

You didn’t think we’d let St. Patrick’s Day go by without something special, did you?  Tomorrow (Tuesday, 17 March) we will be baking some traditional Irish favorites.  The obvious one is Soda Bread.  We’ll have Regular, Brown Bread (Whole Wheat) and Spotted Dog (with Golden Raisins).

The other bread is much less well known, but one I love.  It’s called Whiskey Brack — a yeast bread that is heavily enriched with milk, eggs and butter, and loaded with Irish whiskey soaked golden raisins and currants.  It’s sort of an Irish version of the German Stollen we baked for Christmas.  Last year, I baked a few of them at home and gave them away as gifts.  They were good, but I felt the whiskey flavor was lacking.  This year we are doubling the amount of whiskey, so that should take care of that.

Also look for the Scones and Shamrock Shaped Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies in the pastry case.  We’ll try to keep it filled for you.

Peter

Tomorrow, 5 March, is St. Piran’s day [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Piran%27s_Day].  St. Piran is the patron saint of Cornwall, but I’d never heard of him until a month or so ago when some assertive customers of Cornish decent encouraged us to bake Saffron Buns.  So in honor of the UP’s Cornish heritage, we will be baking Saffron Buns tomorrow.  The buns will be buttery, sweet and full of currants and golden raisins.  As with the Hot Cross Buns last Friday, I don’t know how many people are interested in them, so please let me know if you’d like some set aside for you.

We have new art on the walls of the bakery.  Betsy VanderVeen Rutz has been a customer of ours since last summer.  I love her work [http://www.betsyrutz.com/Betsy_Rutz/Illustration.html] and am very excited to have it on our walls throughout the month of March.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

As I mentioned last week, we will be baking Hot Cross buns every Friday during Lent.  We will have them again this Friday.  We are also making a change to the Friday/Saturday bake schedule.  We will be replacing the Olive Levain we have been baking on Fridays with the new yeast leavened Corn Bread we will bake every Saturday moning.  Once warmer weather arrives we may change it out with something else.  We will still bake the Olive Levain on Tuesdays, so if that is your favorite, you can still get it then.

I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful weather and longer days.  It’s nice to have sun rising when we open the shop each morning.  See you soon!

Peter