Mystery Muffins: My father was employed as a cereal chemist for a regional flour mill in the PNW starting in the 1920's until the1960s. It was his responsibility to take the new local grain to be ground in the mill and run chemical tests on it to determine what and how much to use when milling the grain to create a consistent flour. He would use a mix of these grains ground into flour to bake sample loafs to measure how they would end up as a marketable product. Daily he would bring home part of these test loafs for family consumption. To use this old bread, my mother would put odds and ends of these breads in a pan in the oven to dry out and wait for a future use as crumbs/croutons/etc. One of our favorite recipes was called "Mystery Muffins" and used dried bread crumbs as the main ingredient. During the Great Depression, this was a great way to stretch the food dollar...they also had a big garden to feed our family along with the muffins. With 1 cup of bread crumbs we would have a dozen tasty muffins for all times of the day. On occasion he would take me to his lab at the flour mill so I could see the work that he was doing and ride a freight elevator to the top of the mill where the lab was located.This always made for an exciting day!!
December 17, 2016 at 8:43pm