This polenta bread is unique in texture and flavor. A beautiful golden yellow, a hearty crust, chewy crumb and almost creamy in flavor.
This bread will keep well as the cornmeal helps to retain the moisture in the crumb. Enjoy sliced and toasted with a slab of butter or fried in the griddle with some eggs.
This bread comes packed in a brown paper bag, inside a plastic bag. If not sliced for several days, just run under cool water and heat in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.
Charlie at Patchwork Farm and Bakery is an extraordinary baker, and makes some of the tastiest sourdough bread in the state. This polenta bread is currently made using cornmeal that is grown in New York state and milled by Champlain Valley Mills. Charlie is working toward growing all of his own corn on his farm in East Hardwick to mill into fresh cornmeal for this delightful Polenta Bread.
This bread stands out above the rest! So moist and flavorful, it is like heaven toasted with some butter. A nice crunchy crust with an almost cake-like inside.
Our family loves this bread. It keeps well on the shelf, freezes well and is wonderful as an open faced "cheese toasty" or pb and j. It's a mild sourdough flavor. Most recently, I cubed it fresh and toasted in a cast iron pan w ghee and olive oil and then tossed it w salted crushed garlic. Amazing croutons!
This does keep longer than standard wheat bread. That's a plus for our family. Smaller households or less frequent eaters of bread should definitely try this loaf!
I enjoy the Polentra Bread toasted with cream cheese for breakfast or a snack. The bread itself has an interesting (complex) flavor that I really like, but it isn't too overpowering for me to combine with sweeter toppings like peanut butter (i.e., sourdough, for my palate.) My gluten tolerant kid likes this, too, even if he'd rather eat a plain bagel. I've reordered several times.
Fantastic bread. Toasted it's even more amazing. Stays fresh far longer than straight wheat bread. Definitely a pricey loaf, but we get it over and over.
This is an interesting bread, but its excellence is in its subtleties. Unlike, say, a strong sourdough, where you get that crunch, the pockets of holes from the rising, the chewiness, then the sourness; this bread is very dense, soft and moist. It's not as strongly flavored a sourdough, but its a lovely rich bread with the subtle nose and taste of corn.
I just made a GREAT sandwich using roast beef, mayonnaise, sharp cheddar, and spicy dill pickle slices. The deep flavor of the roast beef, the mayonnaise adding to the creamy quality, the cheddar adding more of that midrange creaminess, but adding a sharpness, and then the spicy dill, which adds a bright flavor (and this dill pickle had a hint of horseradish). This sandwich had a ton of that umami quality, while having an array of flavors up and down the flavor palette. I can't think of a bread that would have been a better match for this sandwich.
While my personal 5 star breads are a really strong sourdough or the seeded baguette you can get here from Farmers To You, this is a great change of pace. And I'll add that even three days later, it's still pretty fresh after being well stored (in one of those Bees Wraps).
My husband and I are addicted to this polenta bread! Toasted with butter, it is the quintessential comfort food, fragrant and chewy and full of natural corn sweetness. The loaf stands up to slicing yet stays moist for several days.
