Pan de yucca y papas

I'm admittedly a true, tye dyed in the wool DeadHead. Imagine my surprise when I fell in love with The Dead Kennedy's a few years ago...at the age of 35. I realized Jello Biafra was a genius and listened to the lyrics under the music. Hey! I want social justice and change! Hey! I'm fed up with politics too! I don't know but I think most of their music... are really well written screams that I'd lend my voice to.

Funnier still would be my also 'I'm way closer to 40 than 14' new found love of South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone do more than produce a choppy looking vulgar cartoon. They provide an outlet for millions of Americans to laugh at ourselves; our politics and wars, our commercialism, capitalism, fears, homelessness, imagination, hair lice, death, poop, addictions (watch the Internet/Grapes of Wrath episode), and the general innate goodness in most of us. 


With this being said, we are a catch phrase household. We can keep a joke running for years. Since we are still working off the Ike Sees Dead People/Billy Mays/Little Miss Michael Jackson South Park episode...I absolutely HAD to buy the birthday boy a Big City Slider Station, one of the last products pitched by Billy Mays. Do I use non stick cookware? NO. Do we need a tiny burger maker in any way shape or form? NO. I HAD to spend the $9.99 and purchase it...and the guy laughed his butt off when he opened it!

If this was not a gluten free household, it would have been purchased with a package of dinner rolls for the burgers. The guy was ready...must make burgers. I decided it was time to try my own mixing, and went for a simple recipe to break the ice. Tam, meet tapioca starch, tapioca starch meet Tam. Let's play! For the slider buns, I used 100% tapioca starch. For the hot dog bun/small sub rolls, I used a combination of potato and tapioca. Pan de yucca y papas? Is that what I did? Well, it made a difference. So did using 1 cup of grated Parmesan in the second batch...so that's the recipe I'm sharing. And yes, the slider's were as yummy as they look in the photo.

In a large bowl, mix:

1 1/4 cups of Tapioca starch/flour

1/2 cup of potato starch

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Add:

1 cup of grated Parmesan or Romano

1 cup of grated cheddar or what have you

Mix into the dry ingredients. It's good to get your hands in there and rub some of the cheese into the starches, sort of like making biscuits.

Add:

Milk; enough to make a dry dough; 3-6 tablespoons, more as needed.

2 eggs, added one at a time.

If mix is too thin, add more potato starch.

Mix together well, until a dough ball forms.

Dump dough out to a tapioca dusted board and start kneading. I must say it was a pleasure to knead...it's been awhile. Knead until a smooth disk is formed. Break the disk into balls and form into ovals.

To make the hot dog sized bums, form the dough balls into the logs. You should get about 10-12 rolls.

Place your ovals or logs on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake about 12- 15 minutes...just until barely browning begins.

This is called pan, which means bread...it's more like cheese held together with starch, and that is what it tasted like until I added the potato starch to batch number 2. That starch gave it the resulting roll a very spongy bread like taste and texture.

I am learning so much every time I bake. We need to just loose the fear and preexisting expectations of our baking skills, or lack of, and just DO IT. While I did have some professional baking training, it was for a cafe, and I can make scones, tea breads, muffins, torts, and tarts that reflect that. I did not ever train in bread. Bread baking requires time, patience, humility, and perseverance. These are learned behaviors for most of us. I am brought to tears each time I create an edible loaf of bread, or notice I corrected another loaf's problem with intuitive or learned repetitive changes. I was a professional cook and caterer. In the restaurant business, it is well known that most cooks can't bake. My newest goal in life is to teach this old 'Line Dog', new tricks. I will become an exception to the cooks can't bake clause. I will make bread with all the respect it deserves...and eat it too.