Lembas Bread from Lord of the Rings, the Elven Waybread

Lembas bread is the elven waybread from Tolkien, the pale cakes wrapped in mallorn leaves that keep Frodo and Sam moving across Mordor when there is nothing else left. Tolkien never wrote down what was in it, which has left every cook who has tried to make it working from three sentences and a lot of imagination.

This version is a rich, honey-sweetened shortbread cut into scored squares. It is dense enough to travel, it keeps for the better part of a week, and it tastes of cinnamon, nutmeg and almond rather than of nothing in particular. Fifteen minutes of mixing, twelve in the oven, and no yeast anywhere near it.

What Lembas Bread Is Supposed to Be

In the books, lembas bread is a thin cake, pale on the outside and cream-colored within, and a single one is enough to keep a traveler on his feet for a day of hard walking. It is baked by the elves of Lorien, wrapped in leaves to keep it fresh, and it stays good for weeks in the wrapping.

None of that is a recipe for lembas bread. What it does tell you is the shape of the thing: flat, dense, portable, sweet enough to be worth eating and dry enough not to spoil. Any version that comes out soft and cakey has missed the point, however good it tastes.

That is why lembas bread is usually made as a shortbread or a scone rather than as a loaf. Fat and sugar are what keep a baked good edible on day four, and a low moisture content is what stops it going moldy in a leaf. A yeasted dough would be the wrong answer for a food designed to be carried.

It is also a bake that suits an evening with a film on. There is no proving, no chilling that has to be timed, and no stage where walking away for ten minutes ruins anything. The dough comes together in one bowl and the oven is busy for barely a quarter of an hour.

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Ingredient Notes

• All-purpose flour. Two cups, and this is one of the rare bakes where measuring properly really matters, because there is almost no liquid to absorb a heavy hand. Spoon it into the cup and level it. The Wheat Foods Council explains what the different protein levels do in its flour primer if you want to understand why bread flour would be the wrong choice here.
• Butter. Eight tablespoons, at room temperature rather than cold. This dough is blended rather than cut, so soft butter coats the flour and gives you a short, sandy crumb instead of flaky layers.
• Light brown sugar. Half a cup, packed. The molasses in it is doing flavor work that white sugar cannot, and it is part of why the finished squares are golden rather than pale.
• Heavy cream. A third of a cup. Cream rather than milk, because the extra fat keeps the crumb tender for days instead of hours.

For the Flavor

• Honey. Two tablespoons. It sweetens, it holds moisture, and it browns the surface. A dark honey such as buckwheat makes a noticeably more interesting biscuit than a mild clover one.
• Cinnamon and nutmeg. A teaspoon and a quarter teaspoon. Grate the nutmeg yourself if you can; the pre-ground kind loses almost everything within a few months.
• Vanilla and almond extract. A teaspoon and half a teaspoon. The almond is the one that makes people ask what the flavor is, and leaving it out is the most common reason a batch tastes flat.
• Baking powder and soda. A teaspoon and half a teaspoon between them. Just enough lift to keep the squares from being hard, not enough to puff them into scones.

Why This Version Is a Shortbread, Not a Loaf

Search for lembas bread and you will find two very different traditions. One camp bakes a herbed focaccia and cuts it into squares, on the grounds that Tolkien called it bread. The other camp bakes something in the shortbread and scone family, on the grounds that it has to survive weeks in a leaf and taste good enough to be a treat.

I am firmly in the second camp, and the photographs here show why. A quartered round of enriched dough bakes into something with a close, sandy crumb that you can see when you break a piece in half. It snaps rather than tears. That is a food you could put in a pack.

The savory version is a perfectly good flatbread and it has nothing to do with the description in the books, which repeatedly emphasizes sweetness and lasting power. If you want the savory one, make focaccia and enjoy it. This is the sweet one.

How To Make Lembas Bread

First, mix the dry ingredients. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a large bowl so the spices are evenly distributed. Lumps of soda taste soapy.

Next, work in the butter and sugar. Add the brown sugar and the softened butter in pieces and blend on low with a mixer until the bowl looks like coarse streusel. Stop there; you are not creaming it.

Then add the liquids. Pour in the cream, honey, vanilla and almond extract and switch to a fork. Mix only until the dough gathers. It should be thick and just short of sticky, and it will look shaggy before it comes together.

After that, roll and cut. Divide the dough in half, roll each half into a rough round about half an inch thick on a floured board, and cut each round into quarters with a bench scraper. Straight down, no dragging.

Finally, score and bake. Draw a shallow X across each piece with the tip of a sharp knife, cutting perhaps a third of the way in. Bake at 425 degrees for about twelve minutes, until the edges are golden and the tops are set, then cool completely on a rack.

Scoring the X

The X on lembas bread comes from the films rather than the books, where it is stamped into each cake before it is wrapped. It is the one detail that makes a plate of these instantly recognizable, so it is worth doing properly.

Use the tip of a thin, sharp knife and pull it toward you in one movement rather than sawing. Go about a third of the way through. Too shallow and it closes as the dough rises; too deep and the piece splits along the line as it bakes.

If you want the leaf shape you can see in one of the photographs, cut it freehand with a small knife: a long oval with two pointed ends, then score a central vein with two diagonals off it. It takes about twenty seconds and it looks far more deliberate than it is.

How To Tell When Lembas Bread Is Done

Lembas bread browns from the edges in, so the edges go golden first while the tops stay noticeably paler. That is correct. You are looking for set rather than browned: press the middle of a piece and it should feel firm with no give underneath.

Twelve minutes is right for half-inch pieces in a hot oven, and thirteen is the outside limit. These carry on cooking on the tray for a minute or two after they come out, and a piece that looked perfect in the oven can be dry by the time it cools. Pull them a shade earlier than feels comfortable.

Make It Ahead

Lembas bread is an unusually cooperative make-ahead bake. The dough can be mixed, rolled, cut and refrigerated on its tray for up to two days under plastic wrap. Bake it straight from cold and add a minute. This is the easiest way to have fresh ones on the day of a party without doing anything on the day.

Unbaked pieces also freeze well. Freeze them flat on a tray, then bag them, and bake from frozen at the same temperature for about fifteen minutes. Score the X before freezing rather than after.

Baked pieces hold their quality for several days, which is rather the point of the food, so making them a day or two before you need them is not a compromise at all.

Storing Lembas Bread

An airtight tin at room temperature keeps lembas bread for four to five days, and they are arguably better on day two than on day one once the spices have settled. Do not refrigerate them; the cold dries the crumb faster than the counter does.

For longer storage, freeze the baked pieces in a bag with parchment between the layers for up to three months. Thaw at room temperature for half an hour, or warm them for four minutes in a low oven to bring back the edges.

If you want to be thorough about it, wrap each piece in parchment cut to look like a leaf and tie it with kitchen twine. It is entirely unnecessary, it keeps them perfectly well, and it is the detail everybody photographs.

Variations and Substitutions

Orange zest. A teaspoon of finely grated zest in place of the almond extract. Brighter, less marzipan, and very good with the honey.

Maple instead of honey. Same quantity of real maple syrup. The squares come out slightly softer and taste more autumnal.

Whole wheat. Replace half the flour with white whole wheat and add a tablespoon more cream. Nuttier, denser and closer to something you would actually carry over a mountain.

Dairy-free. Coconut cream in place of the heavy cream and a firm plant butter work without any other change. The coconut is faintly detectable and nobody minds.

Chopped nuts. A third of a cup of finely chopped almonds or hazelnuts folded in at the end adds crunch and makes them more filling.

Smaller pieces. Cut each round into six or eight instead of four for tea-sized biscuits, and drop the bake to nine or ten minutes.

What to Serve with Lembas Bread

Tea, and strong black tea at that. Lembas bread was made for it. The squares are sweet and dry, which is exactly the shape of thing a hot cup was invented for, and a mug of something milky turns four of them into a small meal.

They also go well with cheese, which sounds odd for something sweet and is not. A sharp cheddar or a wedge of something blue against the honey and the spice works the way a fruit cake and cheese do in the north of England.

Coffee works as well, and mulled cider is the seasonal answer if you are making a night of it. A pot of honey on the table for dipping is not traditional and it is extremely popular with children.

If you are putting together a whole Middle-earth table, these sit well beside classic gingersnap cookies, which share the same warm spices and the same keeping quality, and a plate of blueberry scones covers the softer end of second breakfast.

Lembas Bread FAQ

More Questions About Baking from Middle-earth

For another bake that leans on butter and a short crumb rather than yeast, the cookie croissant takes the opposite approach and is worth the afternoon.