Making Your Own Bay Leaves For Cooking and Gifting

The Bay Laurel Tree and Bay Leaves

The gift giving season is fun, but it can also be challenging. I’ve been thinking of some out of the box ideas for gifts this year and one dawned on me recently. My hubby is a great cook, and one of the greatest things he makes is gumbo.  For gumbo, and several other recipes, he’s always buying bay leaves and probably fifty percent of the time he comments at the price of the tiny jar that contains about six little leaves. Then, in the midst of our 2020 pandemic, we bought a bay laurel tree. Not only is it beautiful in its pot by our little raised bed garden, but we simply pick a few leaves from time to time and dry them out for cooking at a later date. 

So, that led me to the gift idea! If you have a chef in your life, maybe a potted bay laurel tree with drying instructions is the perfect gift. If you are someone who loves to give hostess gifts, buy a tree for yourself and dry the leaves and put them in the jars like I bought on Amazon and give them to friends and family who you visit or dine with. 

Bay Laurel trees are fairly easy to care for. They need sunlight, and can use some shade in high, hot heat. Ours is in a big pot and we bring it in when we know a freeze is coming. 

The fun part is that we often pluck about 8-10 leaves and lay them on a paper towel with a cookie sheet in a dry spot in the house. After a few weeks you’ll see the leaves curling like those in the picture here. At that point we put them in a jar and they are ready to use. How long does it take to dry them? At least two weeks, but depending on the moisture in the air it can be longer. The leaves make a great hostess gift once they are in the jar, and a tree with a set of jars  could be a wonderful gift for that chef in your life who has everything!