Feeding the 5000

OK, so there weren't 5000 McConkies gathered at this reunion, or even 500, but there were many.  (How many?  Did we have a count?)   How does one go about planning, preparing and serving a meal to so many.   Here is the story of how one person did it masterfully.  (A note of apology:   I am sorry I could not be taking pictures like this for every meal.  They were all good!)

Daniel Adams is making strombolli.  It starts out like a pizza.

He begins kneading bread dough almost as soon as he arrives at the fort on Friday afternoon.  That is his daughter Micah assisting.  You will see his wife LuAnn in some of the following pictures.

The dough is set to rise (in three large bowls to contain it all.)

What the dough looks like after it has risen.

The dough is punched down and folded.

We begin to spread it out.

To this general shape.

The dough is spread by palm and then by roller.

In the following sequence we continue to spread and pull:

Now we begin dressing with sauces and ingredients:

Daniel made 8 of these in all, and used different ingredients on different Strombolis.   He even held the cheese on one for people who couldn't eat cheese.

Here is where this begins to differ from pizza.  At this stage the entire thing is rolled up like this:

At the edge you sort of stretch the dough so that clean dough will grab the surface of the roll and stick:

This next stage takes two people.  Carefully lift the roll and place in a greased pan.

I believe he may have covered it with cling wrap while it was rising.  I seem to have missed that point in the pictures.

After a rise of about a half an hour it goes into the oven:

 Here is what it looks like when it comes out of the oven:

Leave it a few minutes to "set up".


Now for the test:

Oooh!

It was sooooooo good!