Try me now, I'll try anything

[venta]

Things I learned last night: do not, on any account, attempt to make fresh breadcrumbs in a motor-driven meat grinder.

No good will come of it.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I almost want to try this now just to find out what happened...

[venta.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't recommend it :)

What happened was that some breadcrumbs came out the end (woo!) and then the motor started making a sullen growling noise and clearly not actually turning round (boo!).

What had happened internally is that fresh bread is much more compressible than meat. All the bread I'd fed into the grinder had become very compressed against the screen at the end, and completely stuck the works solid. I managed to wrench the screen out of the grinder with pliers, and then spent half an hour or so with a kitchen knife slowly chipping away at the really quite surprisingly solid substance my ground bread had turned into until I could finally free everything up.

On the plus side the grinder is made of extremely solid metal and hasn't sustained any damage, as far as I can tell.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Compressible I can believe, but I'm really quite surprised the resulting compressed substance didn't subsequently get ground up and come out of the end. Bread has so many scary properties I'm beginning to wonder if it's really a good idea to eat it! (The one that always gets me is how small particles of dough or damp flour can turn into a stone-like substance if left to dry.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have heard that almost all of the people in prison for murder have eaten bread in the months before committing crimes. Ban it! Ban it!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm really quite surprised the resulting compressed substance didn't subsequently get ground up and come out of the end

Me too!

The mincer comes with three different screens, with tiny holes, middley holes and large holes. I used the middle one, which may have been a poor choice - but I'm a bit reluctant to experiment with the large one, now!

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Does your list of scary properties include the ability to effectively strain the red dye out of WWII military-issue petrol to turn it into colourless black market fuel?

If not, add another item to the list - even the historians on the Wartime Farm (or whatever it was called) TV programme (same folks as Victorian Farm etc) couldn't believe their eyes when they tried it...

[venta.livejournal.com]

Alledgedly, one could also strain WWII-era Brasso through bread to extract drinkable[*] alcohol as well. I have never tried this :)

[*] Though, presumably, not palatable.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Wow! I wonder if that works on modern red diesel too?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Someone on the internet thinks it does (http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080220113150AAuB4u9) (but considerably more people in that thread think it does not ;)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Aha. I remember my mum using the beef mincer to make breadcrumbs but she always used very stale bread. Now I know why!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was speculating that dry/stale bread might be ok. Although that works ok with a grater, too, which is less faff to clean than the mincer!