Remembering Foods Of The Old Days

[Henry]

The above photo taken by Emily Nelson of The Burlington Free Press kind of makes my mouth water for fried dough, known to me as a child as "gillette grose".  Excuse my French Spelling.

Mother used to make her bread in the winter time on a weekly basis.  She would take out the breadmaker which was like a 10 quart pail with an auger type thing hooked to a crank which she would turn to knead the bread.  Never really knew exactly what she put in for ingredients except I remember her with the breadmaker on the big pastry board on top of the large wooden barrel of flour.  She was not one to measure anything and I remember seeing her scoop flour out of the barrel and turning the crank on top of the breadmaker.  She would then cover it with bleached cotton grain bags and I would wake up in the middle of the night and smell that wonderful smell of rising bread as it rose and flowed out on the breadboard from the 10 quart breadmaker.

For breakfast the next morning we always had lots and lots of fried dough with lots of butter and coffee.  Our fried dough rose and had a lot of hollow spots in it, unlike the kind of flat fried dough seen above and I think it tasted even better than that seen above.

Now, I still make fried dough today, but don't go through all of the work of making the dough from scratch like mother did.  I just go in to my Friendly Hannafords Store, go to the freezer is and purchase the frozen bread dough in loafs.  When I want some fried dough, I just take two or three loaves of the frozen dough and put them individually in plastic bags and put them in the refrigerator over night.  In the middle of the day, the next day, I take them out of the refrigerator, wipe some butter on the outside of each loaf and put them in a bowl and cover them.  Viola!!  At supper time, I cut each loaf in about 8 slices and stretch it out a bit and fry it in vegetable oil (about two inches so they will be fried in deep fat).  You would never know I did not make the bread dough from scratch.  Makes a cheap meal and costs no where near the amount you pay for the fried dough like above.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm  Good!!

[Suzy]

Now what about confectioner's sugar, and/or melted butter with maple syrup on top?  I'm just asking....

[Rev. Elizabeth]

When I was in Sahsa, Nicaragua,( on the Atlantic Coast, in the rain forest)  several years ago we ate a lot of beans and rice and beans and rice and after a while I had a real craving for BREAD!  One morning I went into the kitchen area, and low and behold, the cook was making--fried dough.  She made what looked like rolls of  dough, fried them quickly and lightly, and then dipped them in sugar.  You bet I was first in line for breakfast.  Unfortunately, there was only enough so that all we could have was one each.