Fried bread, fry bread, frybread.

[jimb0]

 

i had a whole post typed up, but alas, it's been lost.

 

i searched the forums but didn't find a thread dedicated to fried breads, thus.

 

yesterday, i fried up some toutons to go with a beet soup. toutons are the popular newfoundland version of fried bread, historically made with bits of dough left overnight and fried in the morning with salt pork fat. like in the south, they were/are often served with molasses, butter, and/or beans. on the rock you'll find any number of restaurants serving them, some of which have a whole touton menu with various toppings or spreads. a lot of restaurants deep fry them instead of pan fry them out of ease of cookery, which has become a point of contention among many newfoundlanders.

 

i had a bowl of leftover dough in the fridge from making khachapuris a couple of days ago, so i portioned out a couple of balls, patted them flat, let them proof for twenty minutes or so, and then pan-fried them in a mix of rice bran oil and butter. 

 

fried breads have a long history all over, often but not always as a sustenance food for cold weather climes. the navajo are known for their version of frybread from the 1800s, but it's commonly believed that first nations groups of north america also had their own forms of bannock made with local ingredients before it was re-imported from scotland.

 

anyway i'd like to investigate fried breads more; post your own favourites and experiments here.

Edited February 13, 2021 by jimb0 (log)

[ElsieD]

Is that a take on toutons?

[jimb0]

5 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

Is that a take on toutons?

 

yeah; the page froze and managed to post the picture but lost all the text. it's been edited. these specifically were definitely toutons!

[ElsieD]

When I was in Newfoundland, I ate them every chance I got.  I love them.   Maybe  @chromedome will chime in.

[Anna N]

My ideal fried bread, damn my mouth is watering, is white sandwich bread fried In bacon fat until crisp and golden brown. Top that with a fried egg!  Can’t beat it. 

[ElsieD]

5 minutes ago, Anna N said:

My ideal fried bread, damn my mouth is watering, is white sandwich bread fried In bacon fat until crisp and golden brown. Top that with a fried egg!  Can’t beat it. 

 

Oh, yeah!

[jimb0]

4 hours ago, Anna N said:

My ideal fried bread, damn my mouth is watering, is white sandwich bread fried In bacon fat until crisp and golden brown. Top that with a fried egg!  Can’t beat it. 

 

this is how we always made the (multi-named, depending on region) toad in the hole, of an egg in a piece of bread with the middle removed. 

 

my favourite is always the salty, greasy middle piece. 

 

 

[Darienne]

Frybread.  Oh my oh my oh my.  My very favorite.  We've eaten it all over the Southwest.   Best place in Shiprock New Mexico.  

 

Also Funnel Cakes at American fairs.  We have a place near the farm where they now sell it.  A teensy piece for $8.  I don't think so.  So I came home and made it in the kitchen.  Great fun.  But only once.  You really don't want to start making that kind of stuff at home....

[jimb0]

51 minutes ago, Darienne said:

Frybread.  Oh my oh my oh my.  My very favorite.  We've eaten it all over the Southwest.   Best place in Shiprock New Mexico.  

 

Also Funnel Cakes at American fairs.  We have a place near the farm where they now sell it.  A teensy piece for $8.  I don't think so.  So I came home and made it in the kitchen.  Great fun.  But only once.  You really don't want to start making that kind of stuff at home....

 

i have arguments with myself where i go back and forth on the merits of a deep fryer....

[kayb]

I frequently will make fried cornbread (hoecakes) when I don't want to make a full skillet of the stuff.

 

A local fish place, I guess since they're frying french fries all the time anyway, also serves funnel cakes. Used to be quite fond of them, in the pre-GF days.

 

[heidih]

I have had some excellent churros in my time. A big cement mixer-like turning, an extruder to push the dough out like a sausage with the ridges to hold the sugar/cinnamon, and a huge vat of oil. Perfectly fried they are not really oily and the smell of warm fried dough and cinnamon-sugar Ah!!! 

[kayb]

There is a Mexican bakery in town that has the most marvelous pastries -- and they're cheap! -- and they periodically have churros. Sandy will post on her facebook page when they're available. I'm going to have someone who knows how to do it set my FB where it'll alert when she posts anything. Her churros are To Die For! Last time she was making them, I went in to get some and she'd just sold the last ones. If I didn't mind waiting 10 minutes, she was about to fry another batch. I did not mind waiting.

 

The fresh, HOT churros put the regular ones I'd had before in the shade. I had cinnamon sugar all over my car from the one I ate while sitting in the parking lot.

 

[jimb0]

continued from 

 

also included some buttermilk brioche doughnuts, half powdered sugar and half with a hibiscus-blueberry glaze. 

 

 

the doughnuts are a bit complicated and rich but worth it. the base recipe is from the ideas in food couple’s maximum flavour book. the gist of it is a millionaire’s brioche: 1:1 flour:butter dough, plus eggs, etc. i added 60g of buttermilk powder and i think this will be a permanent addition. i also used salted butter and upped the salt just a hair. the dough is stirred together then left to sit. a few folds and left on the counter for 24 hours, then put in the fridge where i leave it for another 24. 

 

it makes a lot of doughnuts so i halved the dough and put 1/4 each into two ziplocs in the freezer for later use. 

 

the dough is so crazy rich. i love the way both it and the doughnuts smell though; it’s like what every doughnut aspires to smell like. 

 

lovely stiff batter that has to be cold to be worked with. plus since there’s no real kneading you can work scraps back together and cut more doughnuts (after cooling again) with little loss in texture. 

 

[Darienne]

On 2/14/2021 at 2:34 PM, heidih said:

I have had some excellent churros in my time. A big cement mixer-like turning, an extruder to push the dough out like a sausage with the ridges to hold the sugar/cinnamon, and a huge vat of oil. Perfectly fried they are not really oily and the smell of warm fried dough and cinnamon-sugar Ah!!! 

The very best churros I've ever eaten were on the path to the Bufadora Ensenada in Mexico, back in 1970-something, before there was any commercial aspects or safety additions to the place.   There were no fences...no nothing.  You could simply fall off the rock and die. 

 

My Father and I walked down to the Bufadora...my Mother stayed in the car.  On the path...and I do mean 'path'...an old and not very clean man was selling churros and they were made in a not very clean cement mixer.  A real cement mixer.

 

Father and I ate the entire bag full and saved none for my Mother and if you had known my Father, you would know that this was something he would never ever have done.  Ever.  But he and I did.  They were incredible.  

[Nancy in Pátzcuaro]

There used to be a guy who walked around town selling churros--you could hear him calling "Churros! Churros!"--from blocks away. I used to hide from him because he knew me and knew I couldn't resist a good churro. I haven't seen him in a long time so I suspect he retired. The best, of course, are freshly made and warm from the oil, but any churro is better than no churros. Ten pesos, a nickel at today's exchange rate.

 

It's a rare location in México that has adequate guard rails. Basically you're on your own, so pay attention and watch your step! Lots of ways to injure yourself, least of which are obstacles in the street or sidewalk that you may or may not notice. I've stopped wearing a hat after running into too many low roofs or signs in the right of way because the brim prevented me from seeing them. My favorite is the eyelet on the ground that used to be part of a guy-wire system. The wire is long gone but the eyelet remains for someone (usually me) to trip over. Don't ask me how many times I've fallen since we moved here 11 years ago.

[jimb0]

i didn't let them proof long enough because i wanted to get dinner on the table, so they're a bit tighter and not super fluffy. but toutons fried in bacon grease still went surprisingly well with a bowl of baingan bharta

 

[ElsieD]

12 hours ago, jimb0 said:

i didn't let them proof long enough because i wanted to get dinner on the table, so they're a bit tighter and not super fluffy. but toutons fried in bacon grease still went surprisingly well with a bowl of baingan bharta

 

 

I love those things.  On our trips to Newfoundland I ate them whenever I could.

[jimb0]

2 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

I love those things.  On our trips to Newfoundland I ate them whenever I could.

 

and all the more deadly for how easy they are to pop out. out of bread for supper? just pull a couple of hunks of dough out of the fridge and fry them up after a quick proof.

[jimb0]

putting the grill to work for doughnuts

 

 

[heidih]

OMG we are related. I just saw this. That is exactly where I had those churros. I loved the ruins of whatever it had tried to be, watching the water surge,  and managed to get stung by some sea creature off the rocks. But the churros!!!  And the road over from town had roadside stands with wonderful honey, olives, olive oil, and little tamales in big steaming kettles. This was in early 80's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Bufadora

On 4/17/2021 at 6:47 AM, Darienne said:

The very best churros I've ever eaten were on the path to the Bufadora Ensenada in Mexico, back in 1970-something, before there was any commercial aspects or safety additions to the place.   There were no fences...no nothing.  You could simply fall off the rock and die. 

 

My Father and I walked down to the Bufadora...my Mother stayed in the car.  On the path...and I do mean 'path'...an old and not very clean man was selling churros and they were made in a not very clean cement mixer.  A real cement mixer.

 

Father and I ate the entire bag full and saved none for my Mother and if you had known my Father, you would know that this was something he would never ever have done.  Ever.  But he and I did.  They were incredible.  

 

[jedovaty]

On 4/18/2021 at 6:58 PM, jimb0 said:

i didn't let them proof long enough because i wanted to get dinner on the table, so they're a bit tighter and not super fluffy. but toutons fried in bacon grease still went surprisingly well with a bowl of baingan bharta

 

 

 

I looked these up.. aren't they pretty much english muffins?  I know there are various ways to make english muffins (some people use yogurt, I follow a variation of the Model Bakery recipe, etc), but it's pretty much fully proofed dough that is pan fried... ?

[jimb0]

3 hours ago, jedovaty said:

 

I looked these up.. aren't they pretty much english muffins?  I know there are various ways to make english muffins (some people use yogurt, I follow a variation of the Model Bakery recipe, etc), but it's pretty much fully proofed dough that is pan fried... ?

 

perhaps. ime though a touton is generally thicker and is explicitly fried in grease (often rendered salt pork fat, but not always) while english muffins are usually dry-fried

 

some restaurants will also do deep-fried toutons, like a savoury yeast doughnut (though newfoundlanders find this controversial)

Edited June 19, 2021 by jimb0 (log)

[ElsieD]

I have never had a home made English muffin but I have eaten many toutons.  I would never equate the two, not even close.  That said, I like them both.

[jedovaty]

3 hours ago, jimb0 said:

 

perhaps. ime though a touton is generally thicker and is explicitly fried in grease (often rendered salt pork fat, but not always) while english muffins are usually dry-fried

 

some restaurants will also do deep-fried toutons, like a savoury yeast doughnut (though newfoundlanders find this controversial)

I fry mine on ghee or clarified butter.  Makes them super amazing, especially if you push the fermentation as far as you can!  I would be willing to try frying it on some duck fat, too, omg.

[jimb0]

i’m sure they would be delicious!! i’d argue that a yeast leavened ball of dough fried in duck fat would be much closer to a touton than an english muffin, all the same. 

 

especially since modern english muffins tend to the denser nook and crannies sort of crumb while toutons are fluffier like a bun.