Lucky Cat Bakery makes lots of different kinds of breads. In the warmer months its wares are easy to find at local farmers markets. While it’s too early in the year for the outdoor markets to make a comeback, you can still find Lucky Cat Bakery’s loaves at small grocers.
The bread comes in several varieties, all packaged in conventional plastic bread bags with a label bearing the company name and little illustrations of two black cats.
Golden Raisin Oat Bread ($6) is a good place to start. First, because most raisin breads use regular dark raisins -so the golden angle makes this loaf a little different. In the bread, the dried fruits come across as plentiful, sweet, and… intact. Sometimes the raisins in raisin breads fail to hold up well: that’s not the case here.
As for the bread that houses the raisins: it’s good. It’s a sturdy bread, with a nice, chewy texture. The label mentions rolled oats and sea salt, but neither element makes a terribly strong statement. There is some whole wheat flour in the mix too -but the loaf comes across as an old-fashioned farmer’s raisin bread.
Then there is a bread like Focaccia ($5). Focaccia always feels like something that should be crowned with pizza toppings or piled high with sandwich fixings. So, it’s really saying something to remark that Lucky Cat Bakery’s Focaccia can stand on its own. While it has no raisins, the ingredient list includes extra virgin olive oil. That oil gives it a dreamy, dewy texture -while maintaining a nice, crusty chewiness. It’s even better with melted butter, but normal people probably don’t do that to focaccia.
Both the loaves boast short lists of ingredients. There’s nothing exotic or unnatural-sounding in either recipe (unless you count the broken-down components of hard wheat flour -then there’s stuff like “thiamin mononitrate”)
Lucky Cat Bakery operates out of Lucky Cat Farm in Pataskala, Ohio.