Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published March 31, 2006 Click here for the current edition Crawfish Bread, And Other Ideas Everywhere bread is baked, you find cooks topping the unbaked or semi-baked loaves with all manner of savory ingredients, then finishing the baking. That idea, most famously, results in pizza. A few years ago, John Ed Laborde showed up at the Jazz Festival from Marksville with a new food item called crawfish bread. It was an instant hit: a French-style bread with crawfish, cheese, and green onions baked right into it. He also made a sausage and jalapeno bread, and they sold a lot of that, too. The idea is so appealing that it's a wonder stands haven't opened up all over selling it. No, that's wrong. It's no wonder at all. To do that, you'd have to draw customers away from the national chain fast food places, and they're too well entrenched in the low-end restaurant category for that to happen. (This is also the reason why you have to go down back streets to find the few remaining good roast beef poor boys anymore.) But imagine. . . you'd walk into the place and there would be crawfish bread. Barbecue shrimp bread. Oyster Rockefeller bread. Oyster stuffing bread (like they used to make at Zachary's). Chicken-andouille gumbo bread. Crab and corn bread. Blackened tuna bread. Hot shrimp remoulade bread. Red beans and sausage bread. Somebody stop me. Fried oyster, spinach and Brie bread a la Clancy's. Lobster thermidor bread. Crawfish enchilada bread. Foie gras and truffle bread, for the gourmet crowd. Chicken Clemenceau bread. Oysters Foch bread. (Boy, that sounds good.) Crabmeat au gratin bread. The possibilities are endless--without even having to leave the province of Louisiana flavor. But please: no big blobs of melted cheese all over everything, okay? © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com