Bread baked inside a Turkey

[Chef Fowke]

On my Grandville Island Tour/Cooking Class this weekend one of the attendees described a recipe she had for bread baked in a turkey. She thought it was probably a Mennonite recipe named Bobart.

After exhaustive search of the internet I cannot find anything.

Has anyone heard of this?

Attached is the recipe she sent me:

Bobart - Raisin bread for stuffing turkey/fowl

Soak I c. dried raisins/dried fruit of your choice in boiling water

Scald 1c. cream; cool

Beat 2 eggs

2 ¾ c. flour

1 tsp salt

1 pkg yeast

1 tbsp sugar

Combine eggs and cream; add to flour mixture

Mix by hand or in Cuisinart to a ball

Add ¼ c. water, remove from Cuisinart

Drain fruit and flour the fruit and knead into the dough

Rise until doubled and knead again

Place dough in cavity of turkey after it has roasted for ½ hour

Roast until done, about 2 hours

Cover with foil if browning too much

[RAHiggins1]

You've misspelled it Chef. It's Bubbat. See link below.

Bubbat

[Chef Fowke]

...another example of why eGullet is invaluable to Chefs!!!

Does anyone have any experience with this recipe?

...edit for bad spell check!

Edited October 27, 2008 by Chef Fowke (log)

[RAHiggins1]

You've got me thinking about trying this. I think I am going to add some of the preserved fruits and nuts you would find in a traditional fruitcake (the people who matter that eat my food are raisin-haters) and some rum (I'm not mennonite!).

I lifted another recipe from a different forum;

Bubbat is a dried fruit stuffing for poultry...(this is an ages old recipe, but you might have some fun with it!)

1/4 c butter

1/4 c sugar

1 egg

1 c flour

1 1/2 tspn baking powder

2 tspn cinammon

1 tspn salt

1/2 c milk

1 c raisins

1/4 c prunes

Cream butter and sugar. Ad slightly beaten egg. Add dried ingredients, sifted together. Add milk and dried fruit. The cinammon makes for a unique and delicious flavour...this is excellent for turkey...

Lifter

There is no boss worse than a bad habit

[Badiane]

...another example of why eGullet is invaluable to Chefs!!!

Does anyone have any experience with this recipe?

←

I have lots of experience with this recipe, being a mennonite and all. Bubbat is essentially a baking powder biscuit dough with prunes and/or other dried fruit like apricots or raisins. You can bake it in the bird, or outside the bird. We like it with gravy You can also put it in a pan and press a ring of farmer sausage into it and bake it that way for a fast easy weeknight meal. It's a very old version of stuffing. I have a number of recipes at home, if you are interested.

RAHiggins1, I'm fairly certain that if you add rum to the recipe, and invite one mennonite over, they will eat it and love it. Add rum and invite two mennonites over, no one will touch it, and they will pray for your soul for a whole week.

Edited October 27, 2008 by Badiane (log)

[conor610]

Won't you have the same problem as with any stuffing--the bird will be done and drying out long before the bread is cooked to a safe temperature?

[RAHiggins1]

I think that only happens when you stuff a raw bird and completely fill the cavity. This dough needs room to rise while it bakes. So I'm presuming it will not fill the cavity entirely at first. Which will allow heated air inside the cavity until it is displaced by baked dough.

I might have to allow for better drainage inside the cavity so the bottom doesn't just get soggy and not bake.

Edited October 28, 2008 by RAHiggins1 (log)

[Magictofu]

I think that only happens when you stuff a raw bird and completely fill the cavity. This dough needs room to rise while it bakes. So I'm presuming it will not fill the cavity entirely at first. Which will allow heated air inside the cavity until it is displaced by baked dough.

I might have to allow for better drainage inside the cavity so the bottom doesn't just get soggy and not bake.

←

I never had bubbat but I am thinking that the dough will end up more like dumplings than baked bread. In other word, the more humidity in the cavity the more the bread soaks it up.

[Chef Fowke]

Why baking powder instead of yeast???

[sheetz]

Won't you have the same problem as with any stuffing--the bird will be done and drying out long before the bread is cooked to a safe temperature?

←

I'm not even sure it would be a matter of a 'safe' temperature in this case because it looks to me that even when the bread has reached a safe temperature to eat it'll still taste like raw dough. How high a temperature does the dough need to reach before the raw taste is cooked out?

[RAHiggins1]

Why baking powder instead of yeast???

←

That is probably due to the shelf lives of yeast and baking powder or availability to people who restrict themsleves to a "Horse and Buggy" lifestyle. You bake with what you have, also baking powder is more forgiving than yeast.

It could also just be tradition. Biscuit doughs are a poor man's bread. A pious person who shuns the material world would reflect it in their food. Simple and good.

EDIT*

I went and found a recipe with yeast.

Bubbat with Sausage

Edited October 29, 2008 by RAHiggins1 (log)

[RAHiggins1]

Why baking powder instead of yeast???

←

That is probably due to the shelf lives of yeast and baking powder or availability to people who restrict themsleves to a "Horse and Buggy" lifestyle. You bake with what you have, also baking powder is more forgiving than yeast.

It could also just be tradition. Biscuit doughs are a poor man's bread. A pious person who shuns the material world would reflect it in their food. Simple and good.

EDIT*

I went and found a recipe with yeast.

Bubbat with Sausage

←

You could "Update" the recipe and use a chicken sausage or chicken and apple sausage. I think that would mesh nicely with a raisin biscuit.

[sheetz]

You've misspelled it Chef. It's Bubbat. See link below.

Bubbat

←

From the recipe it looks like they cooked the heck out of that chicken, didn't they (3-3.5 lb chicken at 375F for 2 hours)? But I guess that's what you have to do in order to cook the stuffing all the way through.

Why baking powder instead of yeast???

←

It could be a regional variation. In the South the lower gluten flours worked better leavened with baking powder, which is why that region is more famous for its baking powder biscuits than yeast rolls. In the Northern regions the opposite is true because the higher gluten flours worked better with yeast.

Edited October 29, 2008 by sheetz (log)

[Badiane]

This a very old recipe, don't forget. Back in the day, it took a long time to cook a chicken. Especially if it was stuffed with a leaden ball of dough.

The yeast/baking powder thing simply is the difference between Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonites and Russian Mennonites. The Pennsylvania Dutch seems to have had somewhat better resources than the Russians, and hence the food is typically a little more upscale, for lack of a better word.