As this is a two-part recipe, I include two parts of stuff.
I'll try to describe the full bread-baking process, but I'm not writing for the bread-total-newbie. If you've never done it, seek out a guide -- a million such exist. If you have a bread machine, just use that.
Dissolve the honey in the warm water; then sprinkle in the yeast and mix it until it dissolves. Let it sit for five minutes. The yeast should foam a bit as it eats the honey.
Dump in two cups of the flour, and mix well with a wooden spoon. (The dough will be very wet and sticky at this stage; you can't hand-knead it yet. This is called the "sponge".) Let this rise, covered, in a warm place, for an hour.
While this is going on, put the dates and figs (eight ounces of each) in the hot water. Let them soak at least half an hour.
Stir the fruit and soaking liquid into the dough. Add the butter, molasses and salt. Mix well with your trusty wooden spoon.
Add the remaining six cups of flour, a cup at a time, mixing as you go. Eventually the dough will be too thick for the spoon; switch to kneading by hand.
Knead with cheerful vigor for twenty minutes.
Put it back in the warm dark place, covered, and let it rise for an hour or so.
Knead it for another twenty minutes. Then split the dough into two lumps. Put each in a loaf pan, and put them away to rise for yet another hour.
Preheat the oven to 375F. Then bake the loaves 30 to 40 minutes.
When they're done, immediately remove them from the pans. A fully-baked loaf should sound hollow when thumped on the bottom. Let them cool for twenty minutes before cutting. (This is actually important -- something to do with how fast moisture escapes. I think the bread will go stale faster if you violate this rule.)
Eat one loaf of bread. Save the other loaf for...
The Pudding
Mix the sugar and eggs until well-combined. Add the milk, cream, fruit, and everything else. Mix more. Throw in the torn-up bread and let it soak for twenty minutes.
Dump all of that into a 13x9 baking pan. Put the remaining slices of bread on top. Push them down until they're soaked too.
Drizzle the melted butter on top. Mix the sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle that all over the top too. (Yes, this will basically produce a crust of pure sugar. This is correct.)
Bake this at 375F for 45 to 50 minutes, until it's a deep golden brown and the pudding is set in the middle.
Eat and pass out.
Road Songs 1
I was driving from DC to Pittsburgh a few years ago, and I thought, what if no road signs existed? If, in fact, nobody could read.
Civilization collapses. A new American race arises -- a nation of noble moose nomads, sweeping back and forth across the highway-scarred continent. Their racing moosi (genetically engineered by pre-Thrash sports fanatics) can maintain a cantering speed of fifty miles per hour, for days on end, fuelled only by a diet of roadside acacias and gasoline fungus.
The moose nomads do not know the wheel. They do not work iron. They have no written language.
Instead, as they hurtle down the ancient highways, they sing. The road song is all the direction they need -- the route from one city to another, preserved in oral tradition. Passed from father to son, chanted in secret sweat-lodge ceremonies by snow-eyed ancient roadmasters to fuzz-cheeked apprentice navigators and journeyman, um, journeymen.
I wrote such a song, driving from DC to Pittsburgh.
I won't include any of it here, because it was terrible and I've forgotten all of it. But the problem can be solved. I even got it to rhyme, more or less.
You want to mention landmarks in every verse -- not just at critical intersections. That continually reassures the traveller that he's on the right path. The repetitively-chanted chorus allows time for the next landmark to come by. (As well as soothing the moose.)
Road Songs 2
The hardware store near my apartment has a big roadside sign. The movie-marquee kind, with rearrangeable letters.
Sometimes they list specials and prices. Sometimes they have a poem.
OPENERS FOR CANS RUBBER BANDS LOTION FOR DRY HANDS STOP INI love this stuff. They have a few red letters where they've run out of black, and M is usually an upside-down W. It's pop poetry. It will never be published in small expensive journals. It will never win a few hundred dollars from someone's endowment.
It was not written by an advertising firm. It does not jingle.
It's poetry from before Americans forgot what a poem was.
SNAPPLE SPACKLE WHINK STOP IN FOR A DRINKI have no idea what "whink" is. Who cares? I don't care. It's poetic license.