Senator James Abourezk's "Hobo Bread"

Hobo Bread goes back to pioneer days. Originally baked in a used coffee can (thus giving it its iconic cylindrical shape), it was a cheap, easy way to produce bread without yeast, eggs or a lot of time. Popular with vagabonds (is that an okay term to use? It kept appearing in histories of this bread), hobo bread usually contained flour, sugar, water, molasses, honey, nuts and baking soda. James Abourezk put his own spin on hobo bread by removing all those unnecessary extras like molasses and nuts, boiling it down to the basics of this most basic recipe.

Chef James Abourezk

Democratic Senator from South Dakota

Favorite Food/Homespun Recipe: Recipe

Notable:

one of the first pro-Palestine senators; first Arab-American senator

Quotable:

“If you want to curry favor with a politician, give him credit for something someone else did.”

As always, I followed the recipe word for word, no alterations:

INGREDIENTS

2 cups raisins

2 cups boiling water

4 tsp soda

2 cups sugar

2 tbsp oil

4 cups flour

INSTRUCTIONS

1) Mix together first three ingredients.

2) Let stand overnight.

The mixture will essentially be rehydrated raisins (grapes?). They looked plump and juicy and a lot like deer poop. Is that too niche? That’s probably too niche.

3) Add sugar, oil and flour. Mix.

4) Fill well-greased cans or pans 1/2 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

I truly wanted to use a can here, in true hobo bread fashion, but I didn’t have the correct size (the correct size is massive or I’d need like 16 cans). So I loaf panned it.

Voila! If you want to actually watch me attempt to eat it, go to the Cookin’ with Congress Instagram or TikTok. In fact, you don’t even need a TikTok account to watch the videos — just go to the website on your laptop like my mom does. As expected with an unyeasted bread, it did not rise. The bread is dense, stout and low to the ground. Smells fine, as long as you’re obsessed with raisins!

Verdict:

You have to love raisins. You have to LOVE them. Dry, crusty…not astonishing on its own, but spread some salted butter on there? Now we’re talkin’ — like a cheap scone!