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Bread Puffs
If the wheat bread is light enough for the oven at breakfast time, have ready some hot lard in a deep kettle; with the thumb and two fingers pull up some of the dough quite thin, and cut it some two or three inches in length; as these pieces are cut, drop them in the lard and fry like doughnuts. At table they are eaten like biscuit; they may also be served in a vegetable dish with a dressing of hot cream, seasoned with pepper and salt. - In the Kitchen.
This is bread dough at its second rise, torn off and fried instead of baked — an opportunistic breakfast for a household that already had a batch of loaves going. The whole thing hinges on the state of the dough and the temperature of the fat.
- "Light enough for the oven"The dough should be fully proofed — risen, airy, and slow to spring back when poked. Underproofed dough fries into dense, doughy centres; overproofed dough collapses in the fat.
- Fat temperatureThe original gives none. Use 360-375F. Below that the puffs soak up grease; above it they brown before the middle sets. Lard is authentic and fries beautifully, but any neutral high-smoke-point fat works.
- "A deep kettle"A heavy pot with at least three inches of fat and three inches of clear space above it. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Pulling and cuttingStretching the dough thin between thumb and fingers is deliberate — thin pieces puff hollow, thick ones stay bready. Two to three inches long, and don't flour them heavily or the flour will burn in the fat.
- TimingAbout a minute a side, turning once when the underside is deep gold. Thin pieces cook fast.
- DrainingOnto a rack rather than paper, so the undersides stay crisp. They are best within minutes of coming out of the fat.
- The cream dressingHeavy cream heated just to a simmer with pepper and salt, poured over the puffs in a dish. It goes soft and savoury quickly, so dress at the table, not in the kitchen.
- YieldA standard two-loaf batch of white bread dough might give perhaps 24-30 puffs, depending on how large the pieces are torn; the original specifies neither batch size nor servings.
Frying a piece of risen bread dough is one of the oldest uses a baking day has ever been put to, and versions turn up wherever bread is made at home: beignets in Louisiana, sopaipillas in the Southwest, Pennsylvania Dutch fasnachts. What makes this version distinctly American and distinctly of its moment is the assumption behind the first clause — that a household would have a batch of wheat dough proofed and waiting at breakfast time, and that the cook might reasonably choose between the oven and the kettle. The credit line "In the Kitchen" is generally taken to point to Elizabeth S. Miller's cookbook of that name, published in the 1870s, though the identification is an inference; Buckeye Cookery drew on printed sources as well as on contributed household receipts. The suggestion of serving them in a vegetable dish under hot seasoned cream is the more interesting half of the recipe: it treats a sweet-adjacent fried dough as a savoury side, which was a common enough habit before doughnuts hardened into a strictly sugared category.