Making a Breadcrab

Here's how to make your very own bready head crab, inspired by the game Half life.

when I was a youngin I had an "ABC's of cooking" cook book. T was for Turtle, as in Turtle bread. My siblings and I would make turtles, dragons, fish.. all sorts of creatures. If you google "turtle bread" you should be able to find the recipe, but if not, here it is:

(the water and milk should both be warm, and yeast refers to 1 package of instant yeast stuff, oh and that's a tablespoon of sugar.. maybe i should have just typed all this out.. oh well)

I wanted my crab to have a mouth, so I found an oven safe tea cup that didn't have a handle. (most ceramics are oven safe, they are subjected to much higher heats when they are kiln fired.)

I used the "Bread hax".. a breadmachine. Everyone has said that I have too much time on my hands, but by using the bread machine I cut my work down dramatically. It is a bread machine that is meant for 2 cups, and the recipe is 3, so put a plate ontop if it while the flour got kneaded in.
The bread machine has a manual setting that kneads and the dough, lets it rise, then punches it down again. Then it's ready to be "sculpted". If you're doing this by hand, let the dough rise for 30-45 minutes after kneading, then punch it down.

put about 1/4 of the dough aside for the front and back legs

In an attempt to recreate the mouth on the underbelly, i make a ring around the cup and stick raisins in for teeth.

take the rest of the dough, and put it ontop of the cup

Add segmented back legs, with raisin toenails

"arm" thngies

take scissors and cut 5 times to form 6 mouth? thingies

Fold the inner mouth-thingies up a bit so the outer two are more fanglike. Apply raisin teeth

Eggwash.. basically white or yolk or both of an egg, beaten.. some water can be beaten in with it

Apply it on the legs and mouth-part liberally, it will make them darker, and shiney.

Half cooked

Out of the oven

Don't take the tea cup out while it's hot.

tea cup removed

Final Notes: I believe if you were to cover the body (not the legs) with tin foil, it will reduce the browning rate and give a better result. It seemed to work for the second breadcrab. The second breadcrab did not have eggwash on it's limbs, so he has more of a matte finish

I'm sure these would be great for serving salsa or other fine dips.

Hope you've enjoyed this. You can check out my other non-cookie related projects at bruk.org or my journal comic

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