Hello Greenville Illinois!

Hello Greenville Illinois!

Welcome to Piety Hill Bakery

 (618) 581-3480

PLEASE NOTE:  We are all booked up for orders on Wed., Nov. 7. 

We are currently baking Tues-Fri. Email your order to us by 8 pm the night prior, for next morning delivery.

  Thanks so much!!

Email your order to pietyhillbakery@yahoo.com                  

We are home to  Greenville Illinois’  one and only home-made, hearth-baked bread company. We are a Cottage-Industry in Greenville,  Illinois delivering  to any corner in  Bond County. We have been known to deliver mail-order within the United States.  Don’t hesitate to email or call. Life is too short to eat anything but real bread we figure!

Currently we offer “made from scratch”  hand-formed,  New York-Style Bagels. They are crunchy on the outside, dense and chewy inside;  just the way a bagel should be!  …

.Our bagels are available by special order through this blog on Tues-Fri.,  in batches of 6 or 9.  They are boiled then baked, in a typical electric oven.  Just email us what you need at Pietyhillbakery@Yahoo.com.  We will send an email confirmation BY 11 pm that same day.

We offer hearth-baked, artisan Breads in bulk for special events such as weddings. (10 or more loaves required for a brick oven fire.) From our electric oven we currently offer French Baguettes, Country Loaf, Herb, and Grandma’s White Bread. They are available for delivery on Wednesday mornings. Simply text or email your order by 8 pm, and we will Bake & Deliver to your door tomorrow.  We are currently delivering  BAGELS  Tuesday – Friday  mornings, and BREADS on Wednesday mornings. ALWAYS JUST $5 a loaf 0r $8 for a 6 or 9  pack of Bagels (delivery is free,  tax is included.) We  deliver anywhere within a 10 mile radius of Greenville.  This includes: Pocahontas, Old Ripley, Smithboro, Mulberry Grove, and parts in between.

Baking your bread like great, Great-grandma made, with pride and a dash of kindness 🙂

 

 

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Growing Tobacco

I don’t smoke, but my gardening neighbor David had extra seedlings of tobacco.  How could I say no?  Here at Piety Hill Homestead, we are always trying out new plants for their usefulness.

Last summer I grew the common Burley type, used in commercial cigarette manufacturing, and this year he gave me a Hopi tobacco plant. This shorter,  more “rustic” type is used by various cultures in ritual practice, and I read it has about a 9% nicotene content as opposed to Burley’s 1- 3%.  Wow!  That oughta light up a pipe!

To use, I simply air-cured my tobacco leaves indoors last summer after they started turning yellow. Throughout the year, they made an excellent gift for visiting smoking friends.  Because it is a smoke mixture free of the 4,000 odd chemicals that going into store bought cigarettes, I feel happy to offer it as an alternative to my loved ones.

I also use it as a fabulous pesticide.  Dried or fresh, I steep it in water and spray it on plants that host bugs. If you walk by Piety Hill Bakery on 4th St., please pause and become acquainted with this beautiful and useful plant.  I’m sure I’ll have plenty of seed of both types so feel free to email for a freebie!

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Making Dandelion Wine

I have always thought dandelions were pretty.  I do dig them out of my flower beds when I feel motivated,  but I don’t ever use herbicides on my lawn,  so there are  dandelions galore to use from there.

Step one:  picked about 2 quarts, cleaned, used mostly just the blossomsStep two:  boiled for one hour with 4 Qts. water, 1 C. orange juice and zest, lemon juice, grated ginger, 4 C sugar and cloves

Step three:  strained, cooled to 100 degrees and added 1 pk. of baking yeast.  Let sit overnight.

Step four:  bottled, and covered with balloons that have pin holes in them

Step five:  wait IMPATIENTLY at least 6 months before drinking!

Foraging

Piety Hill Bakery was born out of need, but has grown out of a kind of love.  Back in 2009 when many of us were losing jobs we loved, to keep going, to pay the mortgage, we had to invent new ways of surviving.  I always thought Greenville was a wonderful town, but it lacked real bagels!  so I started making my own and offering them for sale.  This has turned into a humble but necessary avocation.  Another survival skill that I have been learning is to forage for food, and I am loving this simple way to find food for FREE!

Here is a pan of greens gathered from around my yard.  Since I am a beginner I am very careful to only eat plants that I know very well.  Included are dandelions, lambs-quarters, plantain leaves, nasturtium and violet leaves.  I sauted them in olive oil, and then rolled an egg around them.  A little pepper, garlic powder, and voila!  Or blacken them with some green tomatoes, bell pepper and serve on a fresh Piety Hill Baguette!Recommended reading for food foragers:  “Feasting Free on Wild Edibles” by Bradford Angier
“The Wild Vegan Cookbook” by “Wildman” Steve Brill

French Baguette

“My love costs me dearly, but I’ve baked and set it on the sill for you to consume. We are match and stick. Eaten up quickly and ever full.” ~ Alex Gohde

An authentic french baguette bakes best hot and fast in a wood-fired oven.   In just about 12 minutes the  crust is very crisp, the crumb full of holes, and it is bursting with moisture,  just for the day.  That is why in France, a fresh baguette is picked up each day.  Let us deliver one to you, each Wednesday or Saturday in time for your breakfast.  They are now available piping hot from Piety Hill Bakery. True bread is never meant to keep for a week!

Order a baguette by 8 pm on a Tuesday, and receive it  between 8 and 10  the following morning. They go great with any meal, and would make the Best Sub Sandwhich’s ever for busy folks like us!

Kulich

Excited to have a little mention of Piety Hill Bakery in the Chicago Tribune last week!

We are baking  Kulich bread up until May Day.  For many Slavic peoples around the world,  the  Easter season wouldn’t be Easter without this festive bread.

My Russian mother made Kulich at Easter-time  for my brother and I  as we were growing up in South America!  Perhaps you can make it a tradition for your children as well.  I bet they would really enjoy the extravagant shape, color and the sweet flavor!

Our Kulich is made with 6 eggs, milk, butter, sugar, flour, orange &  lemon zest, vanilla, raisins, nuts, and a tad of rum in the frosting.

Each ingredient is rich with symbolic meaning.

The Bee Dept.

They say you can never be “too…this, or too that….” but I say: you can never have too many hobbies!

I tried raising bees two summers ago and after a great start, they all suddenly died that fall. I didn’t  know what happened & I was devastated!  An experienced beekeeper was kind enough to come and look over the situation, but he couldn’t figure out what happened either. There is a bee population decline around the world as most people know by now, and I think raising bees may be a very important hobby to keep working at.

And so I am trying again….and I am excited! I love bees very much. Not just that they provide honey for us (which of course goes really well with bagels :)) but that their culture is so cohesive, and so hard-working! What an inspiration.

Here is what my new little bee colony kept busy with this month:

After their journey via USPS to my home, the bees left their crate and settled into my topbar beehive so they could be by their queen. She came in her own teeny box with a couple attendents, and I placed her in my hive which drew the surviving crated bees inside.

First, they need to check out their new digs and they like to cover the entrance to their new home with some kind of substance, as they are doing above right.

Stay Tuned!