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How We got Started
Elephant ears (hereinafter "ears") were a hot item at fairs
beginning in the early 1980's. They are basically a fried bread sprinkled
with sugar and cinnamon, not too much different from Indian Fry Bread made
in the Southwest. In the 1980's the "ears" bread dough was made from "scratch,"
using a bread dough mix containing yeast. Today most "ears" sellers use a
shortcut method of buying already-formed frozen small loaves of bread dough
originally created for restaurants so that the cooks could defrost the
loaves and bake them as needed. That's essentially what we now do,
defrosting the loaves in a micro-wave, cutting them in half, hand forming
the halves into a ball and then flattening them to about 1/2 inch thick
lumps that are fed into powered roller that produces a disk about 10 inches
in diameter and about 1/8 inch thick. The disks are not perfectly round so
when fried about 2-3 minutes in 400-degree vegetable oil they emerge in
various shapes not unlike an elephant's real ear, hence the name.
Our Decatur Breakfast Club began making these at the first Decatur
Celebration, a large free street fair, in 1985, using a packaged mix then on
the market that required adding warm water, mixing, setting aside to rise,
then kneading in flour until small portions could be flattened with a
rolling pin on a flour-covered board. We did this in Decatur's First
Presbyterian Church's kitchen, then walked with pans laden with the disks
about two blocks to where the Celebration committee had built eight- foot
square plywood "booths" without roofs. There we fried "ears" in electric skillet
fry pans, sprinkled pre-mixed sugar and cinnamon on them after allowing the
excess oil to drip off a few seconds. Obviously the production per man-hour
was very low and rain was a constant threat, so after a few years we
constructed an enclosed frame trailer on an old rubber-tired trailer frame
and installed a used gas-fired fryer, a small micro-wave, a electric powered
roller and a used refrigerator for the purchased frozen loaves then
available. Production rate increased, but we then bought a large old iron
kettle and built a cut-off barrel with multiple-gas-burners to support the
kettle that could cook up to seven "ears" at a time to supplement the inside
fryer that could cook only two at a time. The outdoor kettle also became a
major marketing attraction for customers and we were able to net $5500 at
one three-day Celebration with a price of only $1.50 per ear. For
comparison, since 2003 we charged $3.00 at the event to cover the
large share of the gross income taken by the event's organizers and the
state sales tax. Bad weather, either too hot, too cold, or too wet, can
drastically affect our net profit, which funds our service
projects throughout the year.
Many early problems cropped up. The kettle was slow to heat the oil; the
inside fryer frequently broke down during busy times; the trailer roof
leaked; the micro-wave occasionally experienced a power failure; and the
city health department wanted more screens and better hand-cleaning
procedures. So in about 1992 the club voted to design and have built a
customized durable trailer with two built-in higher-capacity gas-fired
fryers with an outside drain, an efficient stainless steel work space,
screened windows, exhaust fan, computerized moving electronic advertising
sign, etc. that we still use today. The trailer cost about $20,000 and by
limiting our local donations to a minimum, the club burned the mortgage in
1996. The most efficient man-power team is four, but during busy and
hot-weather times, a fifth person can provide relief and go after supplies.
Home | Officers | Join Our Breakfast Club | Breakfast Bugle | The Elephant Ear Story
This site was last updated
11/21/07
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