Bubbat (with sausage)

For those of you who will look at this and recognize it as something that Oma made, I wish I could add as scratch and sniff option to take you right into her kitchen. My Mennonite mother-in-law raised and fed 9 kids plus extras that came to the table.
She did all the cooking with no recipe books; everything by memory. I wonder what the ladies talked about when they got together to socialize? I’m sure that often they had to improvise and make do with whatever they had on hand, sometimes coming up with new recipes that way. One of my favorite things she made, when I joined the family, was sausage Bubbat. She usually served it with chicken Borscht and often had Plumimoos (cold fruit soup) for dessert. The Bubbat is very good with the fruit soup.
As a newly wed, I attempted making this, but the words in the Mennonite Cookbook threw me for a loop. “Flour to make a stiff dough . . . Pour into greased pan.” What did that mean? Much later in life I found out that my mother-in-law did have a written recipe and I grabbed it. When I tried making it according to this recipe, I called her up (she is in assisted living now) and I asked her, “did you put in 4 cups of flour, like it says?” She said, “Put in more if it’s not enough.” What’s not enough? I finally got it out of her that you should be able to stir it with a wooden spoon. So, that’s the secret. It all depends how strong your arm is. . . especially when the recipe gets quadrupled!

Ingredients:

4 eggs
2 cups milk, scalded
1 tsp salt
½ cup water
5 cups flour
1 Tbsp instant yeast

4 cups cut up (in bite size pieces) farmer sausage and/or smoked ham.

Method:

Scald milk and add salt. Allow to cool to “warm”
If using regular yeast, dissolve it in the ½ cup water with 1 Tbsp sugar, as usual.
If using instant yeast, add ½ cup water to milk and add the dry yeast to the flour.
Beat eggs well, adding liquids and then stirring in the flour.
Stir in sausage and ham.
Spread into greased 9X13 pan and 1 loaf pan, or all of it into a larger cookie sheet.
Cover with plastic and let rise 1 hour.
Bake at 350F for 45 minutes.