Margaret Rudkin's Bread Stuffing

* Exported from MasterCook *

MARGARET RUDKIN'S BREAD STUFFING

Recipe By :
Serving Size : 8 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Entrees Holiday
Usenet

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
1 lb Bread
1 White onion,
-chopped fine
1 t Salt
Pepper, freshly ground
1/2 ts Sage
1/2 ts Thyme
1/4 lb Butter, melted

On the weekend before Thanksgiving, set aside some
homemade bread, to dry out. Leave it unwrapped so that
it will dry thoroughly.

Thanksgiving morning, cut the bread into thick slices
and remove the crust from each slice. Dip each slice
into cold water, and wring out carefully. After
squeezing each slice dry, crumble it into a large bowl
by rubbing between your hands.

Add salt, pepper, sage, thyme and chopped onion to the
bowl, and stir gently. Pour on the melted butter and
toss like a salad.

NOTES:

* A stuffing recipe from the founder of Pepperidge
Farm Margaret Rudkin founded the Pepperidge Farm
bakery as a health-food venture in 1937 because one of
her children was allergic to white bread. Her family
lived on a farm in Connecticut that had a lot of
pretty sorghum trees that the locals called
"pepperidge trees," hence the name. Rudkin's
pediatrician asked to buy loaves of her whole-grain
bread for other children with white-flour allergies,
and so the business was started. If you look in
cookbooks published in that era, they mostly say that
it is impossible to make bread from whole grains
because the flour was too coarse and the bread would
not hold together. In its time, this was a very risky
venture.

In 1963, Margaret Rudkin published a cookbook with all
of her family recipes. It's called "The Margaret
Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cookbook," (Atheneum Press). It
is a rare book, and has been out of print for 20
years. In 1965 Grosset and Dunlap republished it with
much wider distribution, but that book is also out of
print.

In general I have found that the recipes in this book
are nearly identical to the products sold by the
Pepperidge Farm bakery, and it's a lot of fun to make
your own. Here is her recipe for Thanksgiving turkey
stuffing.

* Rudkin's notes say "taste and sniff as you go,
because you might like more sage or thyme."

: Difficulty: easy.
: Time: 4 days drying bread, 10 minutes preparation.
: Precision: no need to measure.

: Brian Reid
: DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto,
California, USA : reid@decwrl.DEC.COM -or-
{ihnp4,ucbvax,decvax,sun,pyramid}!decwrl!reid

: Copyright (C) 1986 USENET Community Trust



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -