wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (07/25/84)
Note to net.veg people: I am posting the following here to solicit input regarding the vegetable dishes mentioned; please ignore the references to meat in the example I used (this was also posted to net.cooks). I would like to solicit either recipes or general suggestions for the use of already-baked and leftover bread, either stale or fresh, in main dishes, casseroles, or vegetable concoctions. I am NOT interested in dessert recipes; bread pudding is the common usage here (my wife has an old family recipe for chocolate bread pudding that is great -- the tradition in her family, back on the farm, was to make a crock of this pudding and a crock of whipped cream, then stuff yourself until you bloated). What I am looking for is ways to use leftover bread, including rye, wheat, and other non-sweet variety breads, as the carbohydrate ingredient instead of rice, potatoes, or suchlike in a main dish, or adding it for thickening or texture to vegetables, or maybe making it into a dough for crusts or toppings. It is sort of common hereabouts to use white bread in cooked tomatoes, for example. I tried something in this line as an experiment last night. I took about 8 slices of leftover rye bread and diced them. I prepared two cups of chicken boullion (I would have used beef, but chicken was all I could find), and added to it some dried mixed vegetables and dried minced onion, garlic powder, tabasco, and worcestershire sauce. I mixed in the bread, and stirred it into a sort of mush. I then was going to cook some ground beef and layer it in a casserole, but couldn't find the beef I thought I had, so threw in some leftover cooked sloppy-joe (basically flavored ground beef), stirred it all together, and put it in a loaf pan. It would have been better to bake it in a regular oven, to get it crusty, but it is hot now, so I microwaved it for a while. It was edible, but nothing fantastic. I'm going to try frying the leftover bit as a patty to see how that works. Anyway, I solicit your postings as to this sort of thing. We seem to continually have half-loaves of bread left until we feed them to the birds; I'd like to get some good out of these. Will Martin