Pan de sal with ground beef stew

Turn leftover stew into a hearty breakfast.

Split a pan de sal. Lay some lettuce on one half. Spoon some filling on top of the lettuce, top with the other half of the pan de sal and enjoy. The meat filling is the stew from the dish called Arroz A La Cubana. You can also top the beef stew with a fried egg or slices of hard-boiled egg before covering with the top half of the bread.

Bread… it’s been on the news so much lately because of the rising prices of wheat and grain. Not that the rising price and shrinking size of the pan de sal is something new. I’ve been hearing about that complaint since I was a child. What’s new are the suggested substitutes to flour for making pan de sal.

On the news a few weeks ago, some enterprising bakers tried mixing mashed squash into the bread dough. The result was supposedly good; personally, I haven’t tried it, so, I’ll reserve my own assessment.

Another option being pushed is the use of potatoes in place of a portion of the flour. Potato bread, as well as carrot bread, have been on the market for a while although on a relatively small scale. Both are good.

While potatoes and carrots can lessen our dependence on wheat flour, I’ve often wondered why corn has remained under-utilized in this country. We produce so much corn yet most of the corn we harvest end up as animal feed. In other corn-growing countries, corn figures prominently in the cuisine. The corn tortilla and corn bread from Mexico are just some examples.

Imagine if cornmeal can be produced locally. We’d be eating cornbread which is definitely a lot healthier than wheat flour-based bread. We can learn to be less dependent on rice too.