Last weekend I was so excited to make a loaf of sweet potato bread. I used a recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day and made it in my bread machine. Huge mistake. It was watery, cake batter-like, and an hour into the process it had fail written all over it. I continued the bake cycle for an additional 40 minutes and it actually looked like a loaf of bread.
I saved it! I was going to make sandwiches for dinner with it but then thought perhaps I should cut into it — um, totally wet. Oy. I tried to bake it another 20 minutes. Nope, didn’t work. (In retrospect, I think I needed to either add more flour to make up for the watery, peeled potatoes, or I should have baked it on a cake setting.)
My husband said, “Oh well, you tried.” And I said “I’m not throwing it away! I have a sweet potato in there and a lot of flour. I’m not going to waste it!” (ingredients: spelt flour, all-purpose flour, wheat gluten, salt, yeast and shredded sweet potato + I added cinnamon). He chopped the “loaf” of bread into soggy, wet chunks and we placed the chunks on cookie sheets.
We baked the hell out of them. They got very crusty. We let the crumbs cool out on the counter over night.
The next morning I scooped them into a baggy and froze them thinking that someday I would find a use for them.
That day came. As you know, I’m slightly obsessed with soy curls. Whether wrapped in a burrito, or in a sandwich, I love ’em. I was on the Butler Foods website and found this Holiday Soy Curl Bread Dressing recipe. Yes!
I thawed half of the bread crumbs
and got going. I didn’t have mushrooms or chestnuts so I omitted those optional ingredients; I used So Delicious coconut milk instead of soy milk and I added almond slivers before placing the casserole dish in the oven.
Twenty-five minutes later…
…a yummy success!
Have you turned a kitchen fail into a successful yum?
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12 thoughts on “Failed Sweet Potato Spelt Bread turns into a Successful Soy Curl Dressing”
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This reminds me of something my art teacher used to tell me “turn an accident into an accent.” Well done it looks great and it is a good thing to repurpose items…even food 🙂
Congratulations you have entered the kingdom of Cheftom.
They say you become a chef when a recipe fails and rather then throwing it away, you make it into something else.
Sounds like JL is there.
Sincerely
Brian Kudler
I like that! Thanks! 🙂
Usually my fails are…major fails. No rescue. Glad you were able to get creative!
Way to turn failure into victory — hooray for ingenuity! I have an open bag of soy curls and a half-used thing of bread cubes leftover from Thanksgiving, and must give this recipe a try — it probably won’t be as delicious as yours (love the idea of sweet bread in stuffing), but it’s certainly better than throwing stale bread cubes away. Thanks for sharing!
Helen, let me know if you try it! (I’m down to half a bag of soy curls, too…eek!)
Nice save! I bet the dried cubes would also be good in an Italian bread soup. Yum.
This looks fabulous! I love Soy Curls! And I wish I could say that all of my kitchen failures turned out this well!
Now that’s what I call resourcefulness! By the way, can you explain exactly what are soy curls? I’m clueless!
Soy curls rock! http://butlerfoods.com/index.html
Love it! Reminds of the show ‘Chopped’ or ‘Iron Chef’ – when Plan A doesn’t work you just have to improvise! One thing I’ve learned: if you mess something up just call it ‘rustic’ – instead of it being a fail people will think you’re a genius in the kitchen 🙂