Red clover grows in abundance around here. It is, after all, the state flower. I harvest the blossoms in the summer and dry them for winter use. Combined with peppermint and lemon balm they make a tasty tea.

I read somewhere recently that you can use red clover in baking, substituting it for up to 25% of your flour, so I decided to give it a try in a loaf of whole wheat bread.

Here are the ingredients I used:

• 1 5/8 cups water
• 2 T maple syrup
• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup white bread flour
• 3/4 cup dried clover blossoms
• 2 T butter
• 1 t salt
• 2 1/2 t yeast

I made this bread in my bread machine. If you want to do the same, just follow the manufacturer’s instructions. If you prefer to make bread by hand, you can just follow your usual steps.

The red clover added a nice, light texture to the bread and probably also some vitamins and minerals. It also gave it a higher percentage of local ingredients (always my goal, of course).  I think the bread was quite tasty (even though the red clover did not seem to make any difference to the flavor) and I plan to make it again. I’m also thinking about what else I could bake with red clover. I might try biscuits next.

Local analysis:

• Local – red clover blossoms (wild harvested near my house), maple syrup and butter (from local farms), water
• Non local – flour, salt, yeast