American Bresse Hatching Eggs (half dozen)

Description

Here at Crosshatch, we wouldn’t have a rainbow egg basket if we didn’t first have a commitment to heritage dual purpose breeds. Beyond the nutritional value of the wonderful egg, we’ve harvested and tabled quite a number of different dual purpose breeds at various ages and stages and I will say for certain that nothing compares to the American Bresse, a breed recently imported from France that is rumored to be the best tasting chicken in the world.

In France the Poulet de Bresse is sold in delis with its head and legs still attached (as proof) for three figures per bird, where the meat can ‘marble’ when finished traditionally on corn and raw whole milk. While we haven’t seen the meat marble, the breed is definitely able to carry a good amount of yellow fat. Here in the States some feel it may be the true answer to sustainable heritage meat options— the Bresse matures quickly, has a high meat to bone ratio, and lays plentiful pink to tan eggs by the time it reaches harvest at 17-19 weeks. This mean your culls are your food and your breeding pens can continue producing for years to come.

We’ve gotten accustomed to the fact that our heritage birds (Black Copper Marans mainly) just don’t table like the genetically monstrous Tyson Cornish cross our taste buds grew up on. They are phenomenal soup birds but the first time we served roasted roosters most of our gathered family didn’t eat them— the meat was too dark and too red to be recognized as chicken and they were out of their comfort zone. We’ve gotten a lot smarter amount harvest windows and cooking low and slow over the years, but our back yard dual purpose birds still are not a family favorite for roasting. We weren’t sure Bresse could live up to our high hopes for a meat bird that is not a Cornish Cross (poor things) or a cross that can’t be maintained as a line on our farm (Rangers), but… oh, oh, oh. They did.

In the photos below, we rested a 17 week old male raised and harvested with love here at the redstead for five days dry in the fridge, filled with an onion and garlic cloves and roasted at 425* for a few then dropped the temp for a long and slow 220* while going about our day’s chores, brushed with nothing but oil and sea salt. The pan sauce was thick as gravy and the breast is the single best white meat I’ve ever eaten.

Our line of Bresse came to us through North Star Farms, and we’ve now selected our breeders fro three generations focused on type and conformation with the proposed/emerging standard. We see mostly slate gray legs, slightly more than majority white earlobes, and pretty great natural type that retains the bone to body ratio and stance you see in historic depictions of the breed.

We’re excited to share some with you in the name of sustainable back yard and homestead food production!