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Recipe for "bread-stuff-1"

NAME

     BREAD-STUFF-1 - A stuffing recipe from the founder  of  Pep-
     peridge 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  Con-
     necticut  that  had  a  lot of pretty sourgum 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 Pep-
     peridge 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.

INGREDIENTS (Serves 8)

     500 g     bread
     1         white onion, chopped fine
     5 ml      salt
               fresh-ground pepper
     2.5 ml    sage
     2.5 ml    thyme
     125 g     butter, melted

PROCEDURE

          (1)  On the weekend before Thanksgiving, set aside some
               homemeade bread, to dry out. Leave it unwrapped so
               that it will dry thoroughly.
          (2)  Thanksgiving morning, cut  the  bread  into  thick
               slices  and  remove the crust from each slice. Dip
               each slice into cold water, and  wring  out  care-
               fully.  After squeezing each slice dry, crumble it
               into a large bowl by rubbing between your hands.
          (3)  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

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

RATING

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

CONTRIBUTOR

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