White-Girl Fry Bread

A lot of years ago I was a volunteer at an institute on the Navajo reservation near Burnt Water, Arizona (that would be the Native American Baha'i Institute). I worked in the kitchen, preparing lunch and dinner (and breakfast when we had guests for a program) for 10 to 25 people. And once the other girl who worked in the kitchen, Erin, and I made Thanksgiving dinner for about 150 people. That was insane. Neither of us knew how to cook much of anything.

But anyway, one day a lovely Navajo woman came to help out in the kitchen by making fry bread, and teaching Erin and I how to make it. Fry bread is something of a Navajo staple. And dude, it is delicious. Here is a picture:

So what we have here, ladies and gentleman, is flour, salt, baking soda and water mixed into a lovely dough. It is fried until it reaches a slightly crunchy golden-brown perfection on the outside, and maintains a gorgeous chewiness on the inside. Oh, yeah. Fry bread.

Another thing you might notice about this fry bread is that it is round. That happens when someone takes a pinch of the dough and rolls it into a ball. They then pinch and twirl this ball of slowly oozing, temperamental dough, forming it into a delicate circle. It is this circle of yum that is slipped into the hot oil to fry.

So, back in the kitchen, Erin and I totally got how to mix the dough. We could heat the oil to just the right temperature. But we absolutely could not make the dough into circles. Ours looked more like a geography lesson: "And which state is your fry bread shaped like, Johnny?"

It was pretty pathetic. We tried for hours. Eventually we had two baskets of fry bread on offer as people came in to dinner. As they came to the serving window we would ask, "Would you like fry bread with that?" And of course they did... I mean, it's fry bread. And then we would offer both baskets and ask, nodding at the basket of perfect little golden circles, "Navajo fry bread..." and now a guilty glance at the basket of our misshapen efforts, "or white-girl fry bread?"

The white-girl fry bread wound up being eaten, but I'm pretty sure it was out of pity.