Bread is a staple food for good reason. Not only is it delicious, but it is versatile and filling. Any loaf of bread can be used for practically any purpose, breakfast, lunch or dinner, a sandwich or dessert. The possibilities are endless.
However, the idea of making bread can seem like a daunting task if you have never done so before. If that is the case this is a great place to start with easy bread in 10 minutes for 30 cents. It is a great recipe to have in any prepper’s arsenal as it uses cheap, inexpensive, and long-lasting non-perishable ingredients.
Over the past year, there have been countless bread recipes published online and circulating between friends. The global pandemic drove many people to try out baking their own goods for the first time. It also prompted many to join the prepper community as they realized how fragile the comfortable lives they led truly were. This recipe takes all the complications of bread and simplifies them to the bare minimum.
Not only that but depending on what kind of bread you’re making it can be a laborious and time-consuming process. There are really only ten minutes of active work involved in this recipe.
And as preppers, this is definitely a bonus, if we are living in an environment where manual labour is needed just to get by on a daily basis, there might not be the spare time to create a fancy artisanal loaf of bread.
Related: How to Make Homemade Bread in a Can
However, this recipe looks just like the kind you would buy at that over-priced European bakery down the street.
Here is What You Will Need
- 6-7 Cups of Flour
- 2 ½ Cups of Warm Water
- 3 tsp of Dry Active Yeast
- 4 tsp of Sugar
- 4 tsp of Salt
Optional
- 1 Egg
- 1 tbsp of Water
How to Make the Bread
The first thing you will want to do is gather all your ingredients together. This is a flexible recipe so you can use pretty much any kind of flour, sugar, yeast, and salt that is available to you.
Next, using a medium or large bowl, add the warm water. It is essential that the water is very warm in order to dissolve the sugar, but not too hot as that will kill the yeast.
Related: How To Cultivate Your Own Wild Yeast Starter
A good way to test this is to put your finger in the water, if it is so hot that you can’t comfortably keep your finger there, then it is too hot for the yeast!
Add the sugar and stir until you can no longer see the granules and it is dissolved.
Once the sugar has dissolved, add the yeast. Let the yeast sit in the sugar and water for a few minutes until it starts foaming and bubbling on the surface. This is how you know that the yeast is active and ready to go!
After a few minutes, your bowl should look something like this photo. When that happens, it is time to add the flour. I would recommend starting with 4-5 cups of flour and slowly adding more if the dough appears too sticky. The dough should not be sticky, but it also should not be stiff.
When you are mixing the flour, add the salt. Salt and yeast are not friends, so it is important to add the salt last. I used pink salt and you can use any kind of salt. If you use table salt it is a good idea to put a bit less in or your bread might have a strong salty taste.
When all the ingredients are incorporated into a soft dough, lightly dust your counter with flour and turn the mixture out onto it. Knead the dough until it is slightly bouncy. Add more flour if the dough is sticky. I ended up using around six cups of flour in total.
Related: No-Knead Sourdough Bread
You can tell your dough is ready if you press into it and the indents of your fingers are pushed back a little by the dough, the way a sponge pushes back.
Place the ball of dough back into the bowl and cover it with a tea towel. Let the dough rise for 20-30 minutes. This is what the dough should look like before and after:
Lightly flour the surface of your counter again and turn the risen dough out onto it. Now use a rolling pin to gently roll the dough out until it is flat. It will end up covering quite a large area so make sure you have a large surface to do this on.
Related: How to Can Flour for SHTF
I didn’t have a rolling pin, so I used a metal water bottle and it worked well. You can use pretty much any cylindrical object.
Now you have a decision to make. You can roll the dough up into one giant loaf (that’s what I did) or you can split it into two medium-sized loaves. This is totally up to you.
However, the size of your oven or the heat source you are working with is important to consider. Roll the dough like you would a cinnamon bun and tuck the ends into themselves.
Now, cover the loaf once again and let it rise for 20-30 more minutes. While you are waiting for the dough to rise, pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.
Once the dough has risen, it is almost ready to be baked! However, if you like a loaf that is golden brown on the top, you also have the option to make an egg wash. I chose to do this. Simply beat an egg and mix it with the water then brush the mixture over the loaf.
The loaf is almost ready to go in the oven! But first, be sure to score the loaf. Simply take a knife and slice diagonally across the top of the bread. Not only does this look nice, but it gives the bread room to expand in the oven without cracking.
Now you’re ready! Pop the loaf into the oven for 20 minutes. You might need to cook it a little bit longer depending on how hot your oven gets. If you’re not sure your loaf is finished, one way to check is to knock on the bottom of the loaf. If it sounds hollow, you’re good to go!
Ta-da! Here is the final product. It is crispy and golden on the top, and soft on the inside. For only 30 cents this recipe made enough bread to feed an entire family!
It works great to slice and freeze it if you are looking to store some extra loaves, or for the loaf to last a long time. Enjoy!
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By my calculation, 30 cents a loaf is way off the mark.
I pay 2.29 for 5 lbs bag of flour = 18.1 cups = 45.8 cents per lbs.
I also pay 1.49 for 3 packets of yeast, 1 pack is 1/4 oz = 2 1/4 tbs = 49.6 cents per packet.
Not including the salt and sugar the price of 30 cents a loaf is way off. In that 30 cent price forget the egg…
Did you include the power or propane or the natural gas that is also part of the amount that should be included in the price.
If you buy in very large bulk then I might see 30 cents a loaf but not for a normal person.
Just dose not add up. Plus the cost would be so very different from place to place.
Good article. But way off on the price.
Am I right or wrong ??? and don’t forget inflation.
It looks like it’s based in Romania.. So yeah prices are probably different there than here the U.S.
The website is based in America. Who is based in Romania?
Pretty sure they use a VPN for security reasons
Ask a Prepper
Poster based in Romania · 4914ltS lpofloh9e0rus ·
A loaf of bread can provide you with energy and fill a growling stomach in any survival situation.
This DIY bread has the added advantage of doing so for very little time and money
The flour and sugar are labeled French/English, the measuring cup is metric but the instructions are in English measures, so I vote for the article to be from Quebec or, less likely, from Louisiana.
Forgive the pun.
It could be a prebaked cut copy paste article from the past some one forgot to edit?
And French bread can only be made with French flour. Plus if you add up all the minutes required in this article you will come up with something over 110 minutes! This is a real bogus article all around!!
You are soooo funny, Ron. You crack me up. You obviously made a joke. You gave a me a good laugh. We all need a good laugh in these dark times. Literally and figuratively. 😉 There’s no such thing as “French” flour. It’s either self rising or not. And you certainly don’t need “French” flour to make French bread. That’s just ludicrous. It’s called French bread because it ends up with a crust. Even though the flour would end up in France it’s still probably produced by the few dozen major flour milling companies. Whether they’re located in France or not. If you like crusty bread just follow the recipe and enjoy!
Ron – Why not flour? The French have a stipulated terroir for just about everything!
Hmmmmm. I guess it depends on how you look at it and how prepared you are. We have free range chickens that reproduce so our eggs and some meat is free. If we didn’t have chickens we could forage for wild bird eggs and it would still be free. We have flour and buy in bulk because I bake a lot, but if I didn’t have access, we have a grain grinder and I could glean wheat, forage for wild oats or make flour from cattails. Sugar is easy and free because of honey bees and we share with our neighbors but I could also sweeten with dried raisens if I wanted. Water is very easy. The recipe allows for making your own yeast, but I also have sourdough starter. As for baking, i do have a conventional oven but could also use the wood cookstove or my Dutch oven over a campfire. Maybe 30 cents per loaf is figuring a little high?
Actually, Shari if you have dried Raisins then you can make yeast to rise your breads.
I too have a sourdough starter going.
More than one way to get it done, after the grocery store is a smoking ruin.
Unless your running your chickens free range all year round (and thus no snow) chickens are not quite free. Also predators love them as much as we do :-).
As some others pointed out, it appears this recipe was copied from a Canadian source. Nothing wrong with that, but prices vary wildly. Without checking personally, I can assure everyone that flour in the CA Bay Area costs more than flour in most areas in the US. A more accurate article would have been if the author stated that where she lived flour is such and such. But we must remember that these articles are written by amateur authors and are not edited nor proofread before being posted.
Reading a lot of self-published preppier novels on Amazon Kindle I sometimes cringe at the grammatical and technical errors committed by authors who should know better. I just finished reading a self biography of a U.S. Marine Corps company grade officer about his multiple tours in the Sandbox. One would think a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer would know better, but he referred more than once to the odor of cordite after a firefight. Well, unless the folks he was battling were using .303 British SMLEs left over from when Britain finally learned the lesson and fled Afghanistan what he was smelling was the odor of smokeless powder, not cordite. Cordite has not been used since WWII. The Afghanis used .303s when Russia first invaded that beknighted country but soon abandoned them in favor of Kalashnikovs. Dragnikovs and RPGs.
In any event, I feel that it is incumbent upon all of us, if we recognize a gross error in some article, to point it out. Now some may think that the differences in price are a mere bagatelle, not worthy of correct, reasonable minds can differ.
Red Ant sometimes irritates me in some of his posts but he also has a lot of sound advice to offer and shouldn’t be dismisssd out of hand. He should be commended for taking the time to point out that the author’s prices may not apply in many sections of the US. Time has value as well as material costs. At my age and the speed (well, speed certainly isn’t an adjective frequently used in discussing me much these days) how long a project takes viz a viz how much buying a similar product costs is a serious consideration. Just today I read a prepper ( yes, I read other prepper websites too) article on how to make a whistle out of a.223 case and a .22 case that involved grinding and soldering. Jeez Louise! All that time and effort when for under $30 st WallyWorld you can equip the whole family with good quality whistles in one of your scheduled trips there. For under $100 you can equip a Marine rifle platoon with whistles.
So, if the author says the bread can be prepared in under 10 minutes and some reader points out that the time called out in the article is closer to 100 minutes, that is a significant difference and I for one appreciate having been alerted to that miscalculation. I might mess around experimenting with something that took ten minutes. I would hesitate before undertaking a project that took more than an hour and forty minutes
Not for nothing LCC, but a whistle from Walmart can’t be compared to one handcrafted. I think a handcrafted whistle from a .223 and a .22 case is kind of special. Then again, my favorite lure is made out of a beer bottle cap.as they say, beauty is in the ye of the beholder.
Thumbs up on the Kindle self published Prepper novels. Some are pretty good, some are not readable, but it’s interesting to see Authors struggling with all the problems and solutions that can be imagined. Plus, I have Kindle Unlimited so I get most of them for free, good for me, maybe not so good for the authors. I’ve lately started reading Kindle novels that attempt to deal with the events in Revelations, it is a lot of information to master but some of the writers do a good job with it. These novels tend to favor the economic disaster over the EMP, some of the more fervent posters here I think would enjoy them because they hit on the economic and religious themes that get them fired up. Right now reading The Days of Noah by Mark Goodwin, pretty good so far, got some CIA supercomputer messing with the world economy and everything good and Christian there is.
@Judge Holden
All of Canada is bilingual so no matter which province it’s from ALL products are labeled in both French and English. Not only in Quebec. You live here long enough you pick up a little French through osmosis. Pamplemousse is my favourite. Hope you had a great thanksgiving judge.
Thanks for the good wishes, always like reading what’s on your mind. If you live in Texas everything north of the Red River is a big mystery. I took a semester of French and learned that native Texans cannot pronounce FiFi w/o the room collapsing in general laughter and hoots. My favorite French phrase is pomme de terre, which means freedom fries. Or maybe not. Frites?
Oh my! Is see my iPads going downhill and needs to be replaced! Please excuse my technical errors in the meantime. The type does not show until I send.
@Judge Holden
Thanks for that Judge. Always good to hear from you. I can imagine a room erupting into laughter when a Texan tries to say FiFi with a Texan accent. Add a little alcohol and a barbecue and you have a party going. We need a little more of the parties and good times right now judge. I fear our near future will be quite unpleasant. But we’ll all come out the other side stronger as long as they don’t force that darn digital currency on us. Most of us here have been prepping for years. By now we should be prepared to weather the storm. Literally translated pomme de terre means “earth apple”. Just a plain old potato like you’d find in a bag of potatoes. Stay safe judge. Last week doubled my silver holdings. I know food and water are the most important. Doesn’t hurt to also have a secure roof over your head. If you can have some physical gold and silver on hand. A currency reset is inevitable. That’s the only way they’ll be able to “burn off” the immense accumulated debt. It just passed 29 TRILLION! And that’s only the federal debt. What was the FED thinking! Total debt now stands at over 85T. Stay safe. Stay strong. Have faith we’ll come through this. PUREBLOODS RULE!
Armin: My favorite saying is, Just fartin’ around. It’s Dietsch, and fart (fard, D is pronounced like a T) means a horse. It gets a laugh anyway. Another is brain fart. Yeah, too gassy maybe, but Ben Franklin wrote a book on the advantages of farts 🙂 niio
CC: Ich bin nix Deutsch. Ich bin Deitch. Fard is correct. 🙂 niio
Red Ant – Right on! A smart businessman always wants to know how much something costs and how much time will it take. Time is money too and together with the costs it will give him the big picture upon which he decides how to proceed.
Red – It’s “ das pferd”.
Flour in 25 lb. bags at a restaurant supply store that covers Southern California is less than $7.00 a bag. I expect that it is no different at other restaurant supply stores nationally. It appears that you are paying for convenience by buying flour in 5 pound bags.
Most people do not use 25 or 50 pound bags of anything. I surly do not use anything of that size, not even my dog food. Witch is 16.5 lbs per bag.
Now if for some reason I am going to prep something that I can get at that size to save money. then with out a dout, that would be a good deal.
As for convenience. Yes smaller sizes is best for me and my wife. But if I had a larger family, Yes in bulk is the way to go.
Red Ant,
You wrote, “Most people do not use 25 or 50 pound bags of anything.” You are no doubt correct, but “most people” reading this prepper web site probably do, or else they are not really preppers.
still cheaper than store bought and you get more for the price
A French baker would be horrified! But, I don’t care, I’ll try it anyway.
When “That” time comes.
French bakers will be the first to go and least of anyone’s concern.
I will be fat and happy on homemade bread, LOL. 🙂
I beg to differ. Maybe around these parts, but not on the other side of the pond. In the Europe, since medieval times, the trades were well revered for their skills and the services they provide. A baker would be an important member of any survival group. They still are today. That’s why there’s at least one to be found in most European villages.
CC: I liked Vikings, the show. But when the king had the blacksmith’s face pushed onto hot coals, I quit. Any blacksmith was a high priest to Vulcan, god of fires, volcanoes, and a lot of very nasty things. Mercury was god of roman bakers, and bakers were said to have power. niio
seanz: Proper French cooking is peasant, farmhouse food. I don’t care how fancy something may seem, it all started out with a farmwife desperate enough to try to make something eatable. Best bread ever is French, which is the simplest bread to make. Flour, yeast, water. And, I can’t have gluten, so that’s out “) niio
CC: If Nana (granny) read this, her first thought would be, You could get the guillotine in France for murdering food. Next, how to get the cook to go to France. She learned to cook in finishing school then eloped with a po’ boy coal-miner farmer from Penna. That was when she learned she was raised in poverty, at least when it came to food. She always said school taught her how to cook, but her mother-in-law taught her the art of cooking. 2 eggs? Bah, use 3! Never use milk in a recipe if you can get rich milk or light cream. 🙂 niio
city chick–bakers were also prized for their beer making–grain and yeast go into both and made life palatable. although i imagine that the wives knew that as well!
Price does seem a bit off but given the price for half assed “bread” in my grocery store this recipe does generate a far more calorie dense and high-quality bread for about half what I pay from the shelves. Off the cuff price is about a $1.20 per red ants’ numbers.
This is a 2-pound (more or less for red ants calcs) hearty belly filling loaf of bread. From the internet about 160 calories per 2 ounce serving (and WHO eats just one eh?) so 32/2=16 servings X 160 = 2,560 calories. Not bad for a buck twenty, eh?
Half a loaf plus 1000 calories of other food groups isn’t a bad start to a good day. Just remember to get 56 grams protein in the daily mix (adult male min). This bread should have 5 grams per 2 ounce serving so 5X8=almost 40 grams already.
No wonder the Roman Army marched all over the world eating a daily ration of a small wheat loaf, and beans as it’s basic rations.
@Michael
That’s why they were so good at marching. The beans helped to propel them along their way. Just like the old saying;
Beans, beans; good for the heart the more you eat the better you march. LOL!
Beans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot
The more you toot, the better you feel
So have some beans for every meal
Lol 😉
@Pender
Yours is better. You got the idea. I didn’t want to write the word that rhymes with heart. Little rude. My joke was a little flat. Flatulent? 😉 I had actually forgotten that rhyme. Goes back a LONG ways. Thanks for the reminder. Have a great Christmas.
The loaf the Romans ate was surely not the loaf we will be eating when we make this recipe!
Roman Bread – Baccellatum
3 cups whole wheat flour
1tsp salt
1tbsp olive oil
1. Mix the ingredients together into a stiff batter, adding extra water or flour as needed,
2. Knead several times, and spread the dough out flat to a thickness of 1 cm.
3. Cut the dough into squares (around 5-6cm square), and punch four rows of holes all the way into the dough.
4. Bake on a non-greased baking tray for one hour at around 180 C’
5. Keep testing, it must be lightly browned and rock hard. Extend the cooking time if still not hard, reduce the temperature if it is browning too quickly.
6. When hard, allow to cool in the oven.
Carry a dozen or more in a linen bag for the campaign season. Keep dry. To eat soak in water, or crumble into fried bacon, or crush up into powder and use as a flour ration in stews or to make unleavened bread or pulmentun on a hot stone. Or just fry it up in lard or olive oil.
Roman Bread – Pulmentun
2.2 lbs emmer flour
4 cups water
Salt
1. Place a brick, flat rock or roofing tile in a fire that has been reduced to coals and cover with coals and hot ashes.
2. Add flour and salt to water to make a dough of a kneadable consistency.
3. Clear the tile or heating surface of coals and ashes and flatten handful pieces of dough on it about a palm’s thickness and breadth.
4. Cover with a clay pot or lateral to trap the heat and bake to the consistency desired.
Enjoy your Meal!
Sounds like you’re a Roman scholar CC. Does the bread stay in one place or does it start roamin’ all over the room. LOL! I know. The joke’s a non starter. Just like bad yeast, 😉
What’s the purpose of the holes in the dough? Bread is wonderful. Life’s cudgel after all. If you make a round loaf out of something like pimperknuckle and hollow it out you can use it as a soup bowl if you don’t have any dishes handy. Once the soup is gone you can eat the bowl. 😉 If we do have an extended SHTF I’d really like to know how to brew beer. Apparently not that difficult. Just a little labour intensive. Stay safe.
Really? I do not think they speak French in Romania. The flour and sugar are written in French and English so more likely products for Quebec, Canada.
Armin – The bread in the first recipe for which the instructions include making holes in the dough is similar to instructions you will find in making crackers or hardtack. When you finish baking this bread it is very portable as the final product is as hard as a rock.
Thanks for that, CC. Was just wonderin’. 🙂 Have a great Christmas. Stay prepared. Stay safe. From what I’m hearing 2022 should be a doozy. Just to be on the safe side prepare for the worst case scenario. Latest I’ve heard is that Biden is trying to pass legislation to create a data base of vaxxed and unvaxxed tied to other branches of gov’t like social security and the IRS. As you know CC I’m not much of a believer but even I am starting to hope that Jesus turns up to set this world right. What an intolerable mess we have right now.
But, what about Romanians in Quebec? A lot of Romanians were brought to the US. Peace.
Who really cares if it costs 30 cents or twice or three times that much? In a SHTF situation are you going to complain and not make bread because you think it costs more than someone said? Put a sock in it and try to plan ahead. Look further than your nose.
@ Don King
We as a group are the ones who care.
It’s not about who says what.
We need to look at every way possible to make sure that it’s worth it to put time and money in to it.
That’s why We care.
red ant how important is it to you and your family to eat well?
Skills is something that never runs out and always worth something to others.
The Surname Miller and Baker were Honored Members of a town or village as their efforts essentially FED the area with flour and bread.
Maybe you could look up Horno Oven and see how some effort, and skillset you could BE the Baker of the neighborhood once things got a little less crazy. Hint a Cob Horno needs a roof to keep the rain off. I’ve built them in South America. Seems they “Modernized” and forgot how to build cob ovens. Sigh.
@ Michael
Yes I think a Cob Horno would be a really good thing to have. Yes they have to have a roof over them also.
Feeding my wife and me is very important, that’s why I have been prepping hard now for 40 yrs and 32 yrs of it is with my wife.
Surviving is how I been living my hole life. Been taking care of my self sences I was 8 yrs old. Not a good life when I was born. was very hard, but my Granny help me stay alive and she learned me a lot about how to stay alive and survive.
She passed down a mess of information to me and I still remember everything. She was my everything growing up.
Thank you for the post.
I just might build a Cod Horno. Sounds neat.
I will draft up some plans and see if or how it works out.
Thanks again…
For the last few articles it seams the prepping is for those people with lots of money and for staying put.
I have several issues with this.
1. When a shift happens and you stay put unless you are in very well situated location you will most likely loose most of your stuff.
2. This article requires a OVEN and nothing is said as to a way to cook it without one. Which there are ways.
3. Some of the things red ant said is also true.
4. Flour is going to be a sought after staple and there is also self rising and you only show non self rising.
I think this site needs to get back to real prepping with things like how to survive with very few things because if you have to leave then you will be leaving fast and may not be able to grab a to go bag(depending on where you are and what’s between you and your bag.
When a Shift happens it will be in a way that your not prepared for.
Retired maybe a comment about using a #10 tin can as an oven on top of your wood stove might be useful? Or some information about making flat breads with a sheet of steel (non-galvanized please, zinc is toxic that way) on a bed of coals?
Maybe some ideas about flour extenders like cattails and acorn flours?
You seem to have some ideas about this please expand.
@ Michael
Flat bread would be a good way to have a bread product.
Got any recipes.
Never made flat bread before.
Iron skillets are all over the place….. why not just buy one
Take a look at the index of article titles Retired. There have been quite a few published here on alternative cooking/baking methods. The focus here was on what won needs to do to making the bread dough itself. Once you know how to do that, you can be resourceful with what you have available to find ways to actually bake it. Heck, I think Red would put it on his car dashboard, close the door and watch it rise up and bake in the Arizona sun.
CC: Yeah, in summer, to make suntea, fill jar with water, some tea, and put on oven mitts. Take jar out, hold up to sun, go in house before it all boils away LOL. Please do not step on piles of rags on the sidewalk. It tourists who melted in our gentle summer sun.
Right now, it’s kimchi and kraut. Kimchi uses miso, which is made with koji, a fungus. it demands oxygen, and I know too well if it doesn’t get it, it reeks like an outhouse. Maybe like Limburger. One great thing about kimchi is it’s shelf stable and can be kept for months. niio
Michael: We have iron from Pappy and Nanna, and Lodge picked up at yard sales. The rough texture of the coating is from oil baked on to cure it. It wears off, but no, I don’t like it. niio
Retired, You are right about many of the suggestions being for those with more cash. There are a couple of ways to cook bread without an oven. One is to use a dutch oven with a lid that has an edge on it to pile hot coals over the top. Another is to make a stiff dough that can be kneaded into a long “snake” and then coiled around a stick that has either been soaked in water so it won’t burn or green wood. Of course, the type of wood chosen needs to be non-toxic.
For me, personally, I have been looking on the dark side for so long that I am a little worn out by it all and enjoy the triviality of some of our conversation but, you are right, we do need to get back to being more realistic.
@Sagebrush Lin
Interesting that you’ve also run across the internet archive and project Gutenberg. In the day used to go to the IA all the time to look up and download those treasures that the major bookstores didn’t carry anymore. Was really interested in history at the time so I downloaded the Times History of the war. Among many other things. Also the 1911 version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Fascinating stuff. The more I learn about people the more they amaze me, Lin. It ends up being that most of the time we have more in common than not. H’mm. Very interesting. 🙂
Armin, That is interesting that you have downloaded so much from those sites. I have done the same. That’s why I read such treasures as a book written by a physician on scurvy from the 1700’s. As we have so much revisionist history today, it has been revealing to go back to the actual sources.
I would imagine if we lived less than a couple thousand miles away, we would have some good conversations.
This is a season of change for the whole planet. It will be fascinating to see what unfolds. May God’s Grace keep you and yours.
That is so kind of you to say, Lin. Obviously the same for you. It WOULD be interesting to live closer. I think we WOULD have some very interesting conversations. Just a very quick comment about the so-called dark side. I KNOW it’s exhausting but we have to have the courage to look the dark side directly in the eye and NOT be afraid of it. By doing that we drag the dark into the light and that takes away its power. You have no idea how many rabbit holes I’ve gone down in my life and the amazing info I’ve run across. That doesn’t mean that I believe everything that I read. I’m of the opinion that most anything we can imagine is possible but some things are more probable than others. And I’m sure that even in this relatively small galaxy we live in there are things that are so far beyond our ken that we couldn’t even begin to imagine them. There are so many wonders out there waiting for us to discover and all we can do on this amazing planet of ours is find better ways to tyrannize us and kill each other. Sometimes all I want to do is weep and pull out my hair at all the unnecessary stupidity going on around us. This planet could be a paradise for us if we just had the will and resolve to make it so. In spite of what’s going on around us we still live in a very prosperous part of the world if you consider that millions if not billions of people have it much worse than we do. I just really hate being treated like some kind of pet or barnyard animal by the ruling elite. I take solace in that I think their day is coming and what’s happening right now is a planetary spiritual awakening and a major paradigm shift. I am weary beyond imagining Lin but I live in hope for a better day. We just have to hang on and have faith that eventually a better day will dawn for all of humanity.Remember the line from Floyd? “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way”. 😉
Raven Prepper “Expert”
Your comment about iron skillets is marginally correct.
Most of the “newer” ones made by Lodge and such are barely useful. I’ve some 50+ year old Griswould’s that I can flip an egg right out sunny side up.
To put it in gunny terms it’s the difference between a WW2 Liberator Pistol and a Colt Commander. Both will shoot but one needs a stick to push out the empty before you reload that smoothbore Liberator.
Michael,
I appreciate your pointing that out about the difference between now and then. I have a wonderful huge square and deep pan given to me by a 104 year old lady in 1985. It is something I will never give away, though I did give the huge round pan she gave me to my son. They are both great pans that make cooking easy.
well in all fairness the 1911 is a old jamming relic…..
You can get a decent griswald for around 40 bucks, Most of ours are from the fleemarkets and antquie stores. You can clean up the lodge pans if you need to.
People are complaining about price. What about the time. Title says 10 minutes!
10 minutes of hands on time I think. The rest of the time is rising/baking.
I’d have to agree, this is the most misleading figure in the article because most ppl assume the time is from prep to plate.
Prices change around the world, heck, from week to week even in one place.
Bread with yeast done properly will be less common than flat beads and other unleavened types especially when there will be so many other chores to do by hand, all requiring time more than our current equivalent chores. Wash clothes, a minute to shove it in the machine now, but by hand…? Dig the garden, maybe half hour with rotary hoe, with a fork or shovel…? Your time is going to be very limited to basic cooking if you’re doing other stuff to stay alive and keep the home fires burning. Of course the more ppl these chores are shared with the better but anything manual is hard work and everything manual… there just won’t be enough hours in a day sometimes.
Ginny:
I’d have to agree as far as switching from automatic to manual… metaphorically speaking. That’s why I’ve been trying to use as many manual tools for things as possible, as far as household chores go. Also, I have a tiny kitchen and I don’t have room for a lot of gadgets. How I figure, get used to using them now before you have to. Washing clothes in buckets in the tub takes more physical effort than tossing them in the machine, but I never need quarters, I never need to wait for the machine to be available, I can do it when I want and know that they’re thoroughly cleaned and rinsed. Drip drying costs nothing and you can fluff your clothes by using a little vinegar in the rinse water and giving them a good shaking out when they are dry.
Use your convenience tools while you can and enjoy them, but try using manual tools here and there just so you get used to them.
Miss Kitty, I agree and do something similar to you even now.
When I was first married I moved to the outback and everything was manual other than a washing machine I used once or twice a week when we started the generator. No aircon, gas and wood stoves and a kerosene fridge were the limit of modern living. Lighting was lamp or candle, no phone, just a RFDS (VHF) radio to connect us to the outside world and 80 miles to my nearest neighbour. Cloth nappies, the old fashioned terry toweling squares with 2 safety pins, when the kids came along and red dust turned everything white a delicate shade of pink. My sister sent me chocolate brown nappies which were a god send LOL. Hand washing was the only way in those days for most things.
Solar Clothes Driers : 1st step, make sure Someone turned it on. 🙂
Got to say, we were very modern when I was a kid. We had electric in the kitchen! Magic, because we could have a radio without using a car battery. The wood and coal burning stove even had a huge hot water tank on the back.
Our generation will make do because we were raised that way. It would pain me to lose the computer, but hardly the loss kids today would see it as. But then, most will be too busy learning that the new age socialists long for is a matter of eat or be eaten. My hope and prayer is that Washington’s 3rd Valley Forge prophecy is as many take it, America’s deliverance from the Tribulation–we’re to be taken out of the thick of the war and what our enemy will suffer. niio
@ Michael
Flat bread would be a good way to have a bread product.
Got any recipes.
Never made flat bread before.
sorry pushed it twice.
Homemade tortillas:
2c flour
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 c water
3 Tbsp olive oil
1. Combine flour and salt. Stir in water and oil. Turn onto a floured surface. Knead 10-12 times. Let rest 10 minutes
2. Divide into 8 portions. Roll each into 7 in circle
3. In greased skillet cook over medium heat until lightly browned. 1 min on each side
Thanks Rachel a good basic recipe for tortillas 🙂
I think the most important point about anything involving Food Survival is
DO IT TODAY. The old axiom “Store what you eat, eat what you store”.
Waiting until the lights go out is a poor time to be burning up your food efforts over that wood stove or maybe if your less prepared a campfire.
I strongly suggest if you have never cooked up a batch of dried beans and made bread from scratch to DO IT TODAY. You’re going to have to learn by making mistakes. Better to make them while you can afford to throw away bad mistakes.
Never mind how much the ingredients cost, how can you make this is under 10 minutes? You cant even bake it in 10 min.
exactly! i bake two loaves a week and it needs 55-60 minutes to bake, not 20 minutes, and the pic is of a single loaf, not the two i divide the dough into. got to be a typo.
dweiss
Red Ant;
This is for a pan cooked type of biscuit or bannock.
2 cups of flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt
Plain yogurt, home made is good, whole milk is best as it’s richer, but any kind will do
Mix dry ingredients
Add enough yogurt a bit at a time to make a fairly stiff dough.
Turn out and knead on floured surface. Make balls of dough the size you want for single servings. Flatten slightly and set aside.
In a non stick skillet heat ghee or shortening on medium heat until fat is hot and shimmering but not smoking. Add biscuits to pan one at a time, don’t overcrowd the pan. If they’re browning too fast, reduce heat. Cover and cook for about three minutes, then turn the biscuits over and cook for about three minutes more or until they are browned on both sides. Remove and let cool. Sprinkle greasy side with a little salt if desired.
If you don’t have yogurt use milk or water to make dough, and add a teaspoon or two of vinegar to activate the baking soda. Add vinegar to the first cupful of liquid and add more liquid a little bit at a time. You can also add shortening or meat drippings before the liquid for additional tenderness and flavor. If you use a whole milk yogurt, extra fat shouldn’t be necessary.
This recipe is just something that I baked on a whim, but it came out really well. I used ghee to fry the biscuits in and it was easy and delicious. There were no leftovers, so I don’t know how it holds over to the next day.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with ingredients. Now is the time, while things are still available, so you can adjust the recipe to your own liking.
Also, if the biscuits are too dense, use more baking soda and vinegar to make them fluffier. These came out like a crispy cracker outside and soft and chewy inside and were dense despite the leavening from the baking soda and the sourness of the yogurt. This is something that you can knock together quickly.
You can also use flour, oil or shortening, if desired, salt and enough water to make a stiff dough. Bake in hot ungreased skillet until lightly browned on both sides. This comes out more like a tortilla or matzo, and is good for scooping up stew.
@ miss 😺
O, Thank you for the recipe. I will put it to use. I’m not a big bread eater, but I will love bread when the SHTF.
Say how was your turkey, LOL did you find everything. lol. just teasing…
Hope you and your mom are doing good and hope you get all you can to make it thru this next year.
O and I lost my old Tom cat. he was beat up and mean, but I befriended him and then some scum bag ran him over, but my miss tiddy cat is still going strong. she is like my dog instead of my cat. she rules the roost.
So good to hear from you and Thank you so very much for the recipe.
I will keep y’all in my prayers. Keep the recipes coming, I have a very large recipe book for shtf. just got a new recipe book 1906. big differents from then to know.
Thanks again…
Red Ant:
No missing giblets this year; Mom and I had fish.
Sorry to hear about your cat, but I’m glad Miss Tiddy’s doing well.
Hope you and your family had a great Thanksgiving and will continue to live, thrive and survive through Christmas and beyond.
Always good to hear from you.
Red Ant, Your cookbook from 1906 will be a window into that time and very useful. During WW1 and WW2, there was rationing which resulted in many cookbooks using limited supplies. I find it remarkable how many of them have been digitized and put on line. Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg have several.
@ miss 😺
Fish?
Haven’t had fish for Thanksgiving. We eat fish sometimes. Not a big fish eater. I do like red snapper.
That sounds fishy to me. LOL
We had turkey and I don’t like turkey, I’m a ham man…
No family came over, fine by me. ;(
Y’all stay safe.
@ Sagebrush Lin
I remember stamps for rationing, funny when your poor everything is rationed.
Yes getting recipes on line is neat but I like the old days, books, news papers and pieces of paper. I have a box full of them.
Thank you for the post.
Hi, Miss Kitty. Nice to see you chime in. Fish for thanksgiving? Why not. Probably a lot healthier than going into a tryptophan coma. Did you manage to make it to some black Friday deals or did you decide to pass that up? Apparently this most recent black Friday one of the worst in the last 70 years. I can believe it. Bannock is so simple and so good. The indigenous peoples would like to claim Bannock. The word “bannock” actually comes from the Scots. Instead of baking it you’re frying it and then you end with fried unleavened bread. Bannock and scones very similar. When my wife and I used to go camping we made pan fried scones and they were VERY good. Add a little butter. Your favourite jam. Some coffee and you have a delicious light breakfast. While I remember if you don’t want to use just plain old vinegar you can also use buttermilk to activate the baking soda. I know you’re not afraid to try new things, Miss Kitty, so I’ll pass this recipe along to you. If you like bagels, REAL bagels, you’ll love this bread. Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmuVndov_68
Ingredients:
flour – 600 g (21.16 oz)
milk – 400 ml (13.5 fl oz)
oil – 30 ml (1 fl oz)
yeast – 10 g (0.35 oz)
sugar – 30 g (1 oz)
salt – 8 g (0.29 oz)
water – 2 l (0.52 gallon)
TO BOIL 5 min
Tray size 35 cm x 40 cm (14 in x 16 in)
IN THE OVEN 180 °C (356 °F)/20 minutes
So just boil the dough for 5 minutes before baking. This is how real bagels are made if you pick them up from a real Jewish deli. Not those fake things from the local grocer. The dough is first boiled before it’s baked. When I get a chance will make this recipe and see how it turns out. May HAVE to learn how to bake my own bread. Up here in the GWN the shelves are still fairly well stocked. Especially bread. Just got my Christmas stollen so I’m good to go for Christmas. Also managed to pick up a couple of boxes of brandy beans before they were snapped up. Will save THOSE for Christmas and New Years. 😉 Disappointed in the domino steine this year. Price wasn’t too bad but really tiny packages. I also already have my ginger bread cookies on hand. 🙂 For Christmas I want to try and make a trifle using condensed milk instead of fresh milk. LOVE trifle! Haven’t had it for years. That reminds me. Have to start “soaking” the fruit cake. You have to be of legal age to eat MY trifle! LOL! Will layer it. One layer mandarins. Another cherries. Another whatever fruit I have on hand. There’ll be some chocolate mocha pudding in there somewhere. And VERY liberal with all kinds of different booze. Don’t have the proper large brandy glass to put it in so will use one of those giant 1.5 litre mason jars. Probably better if I do. Don’t want to open it near an open flame. LOL! Have a great December and a very happy and safe Christmas and New Years. 🙂
Armin,
Thank you for your kind words. A portion of the conflict for many of us, is knowing that not all of our family is on-board with the general thinking on this site. We all would like our families to be safe and comfortable in the coming twist in the situation. I quit visiting my Canadian relatives years ago, when all they could do was to denigrate the U.S. My Left Coast relatives would rather I fell off the edge of the earth because of my faith and politics. But, in spite of that, I still don’t want harm to come to them.
I will be fine. I know how to live a limited lifestyle. This is such a great site with real ready-to-use practical information.
@Sagebrush Lin
That’s HORRIBLE, Lin! What’s the use of trashing someone’s country when we have so many of our own problems here. What I’m starting to see is that no matter the country they’re from politicians all seem to be cut from the same cloth. Our current Ontario premier (comparable to a state governor in the US) seems to be crooked and corrupt as heck. Bribing his favoured companies and finding ways to skirt the law to get his way seems to be part of his game plan. Seems to run deep in the Ford family. His brother wasn’t any better than him. He was a drug addict. Don’t know how he ever got elected. I’m assuming your Canuck relatives aren’t into prepping. Don’t wanna put the west coast down but the vibe I get from them is that they like their “botanicals” a lot. And their lattes from Starbucks. So sorry that they feel like that about you. When the crash happens I’m pretty sure the borders will be locked down tight. They won’t be able to run to you for help. The vibe I get from you on this page is that you’re a really good person and it’s always a pleasure to talk with you. As a general rule the gals seem to be so much more positive than the guys. The guys seem to be getting a little nit picky which verges on the OCD. I don’t like talking with negative people, Lin. There’s enough negativity in my life with all that’s going on around me. I’m doing my best to keep track of what’s going on in the world. And it’s exhausting. So many bad things happening. Not a lot of good news these days. So I’d rather talk to you gals. Stay safe. Stay strong. I’m also used to making do with little. I know you gals will be fine. You ladies are way tougher than we think you are. 😉
Yum! Sounds delicious but you better not drive after.
Happy New Year to you, too.
Instead of the yogurt you can use use whole milk with lemon juice or vinegar to make a type of buttermilk substitute. This turns the recipe to something like Irish soda bread, yummmm.
Ginny: I like yogurt to make cheese. Yogurt is easy to make and replaces a lot of things. If I stay away from carbs, I can digest yogurt, but not milk. 🙂 niio
I agree. If I were in a bind for time and/or funds, I would make bannock rather than a loaf of bread. It’s hard to mess up bannock and it’s versatile. Twenty ways to make it and at least 5 ways to cook it. Thanks for the recipe. It’s a bit different from mine and looks good.
I commend all who take the time to create a post. That’s what makes this site grea.
traditional french bread uses ZERO sugar and a sourdough starter. Traditionally it was mixed up and risen in a wood trough which became the resevoir of the sourdough bacteria (not washed). I’m not sure what the wood type was but it’s probably important to not use the really wrong kind that might inhibit the sourdough culture or throw off it’s development (example I would assume cedar might be too antibacterial and add an unusual flavor etc). From what I understand the long split tree pole trough then had the risen loaves that were all lined up like peas in a pod, the person put the whole thing on their shoulder, and walked it down to the bakery for the once a week baking. Only one oven necessary for a whole community of people and baking like that only done once a week. By the end of the week the dry bread was being used for french toast, croutons, etc. This assumes you have fields nearby for grain and a brick oven and fuel to run it. France and parts of canada work for this but obviously in an area thats all marshland, the tropics, steep mountains with no flat lands for grain, the arctic with permafrost so grain growing is not possible and no wood or peat for fuel the diet would have to be different. Sourdough is great for your health and you can get starter that is centuries old by mail.
GJ: we always made dough troughs from maple. black birch is great, too. Alder too soft and any conifer is antifungal/bacterial. Some woods, like yew, can be toxic. Food judges at fairs usually (at least used to) use cedar because it adds nothing to the taste, but it also helps sterilize things.
When still eating wheat, French bread was a mainstay. Dough loaves were formed for the last rise, and put on cookie sheets. When done rising, we hit them with high humidity at 400F for 15 minutes and they swelled up nicely. niio
Not French bread since that is baked in a steam oven, but a good simple bread recipe, good article for beginning bakers. You can add all sorts of stuff to the basic recipe, sunflower seeds, ground mesquite or other beans, any other grain flour, for purpose of upping calories and nutrition.
https://gourmet.lovetoknow.com/History_of_French_Bread interesting little article on French bread, funny it was invented because the French passed a law against bakers starting work before 4 A.M.
The prices in this reminded me of the woman who found a recipe from her great-great-grandmother and tried it out for a dinner for six. It failed miserably. Her mother tried to console her and went over the recipe with her. They found the problem when they checked the list of things she needed and noted “about 50 cents worth of beef”.
Lots of inherited hand written recipes are just like that one George B. When folks really knew how to cook, they required little details! Usually half the actual recipe Is found missing because they didn’t need to write it all down! You’re lucky if you inherit an actual cookbook with hand written notes!
I was recently given an old cookbook, in Estonian, that was written just when wood stoves were beginning to be phased out. The recipes use methods of measurement that reflect different kitchen supplies than we have now. The author writes about how dark the corner is where the wood stove is and that she likes her little primus stove because she can put it out closer to natural light. Estonian wood stoves used to be huge blocks of material enough to have various functions in different sections including some that were big enough for someone to lay down on an upper section if they needed extra warmth. My father built a smaller version that had a large zig zag section of fire brick for the smoke to travel through in order to warm up the stone. The method of use was to build a super hot fire to heat up the fire bricks. When the fire was almost out, the last of the hot wood was pulled out and the damper closed. Done correctly, an average sized house would be kept warm all night, even with 10 degree F weather without any fire going. The house was warm enough in the morning that I could have my morning routine before I had to build another fire. If the fire was built hot enough, it cleaned out most of the creosote in the smoke channels, though there was a clean-out door as a back-up system.
You people are going to disagree with whatever is written. Get a life. The author is only showing how to make some bread.
Chris Palmer: You are correct.Many of those that constantly
make negative comments seem to really enjoy belittling others.
The one who calls himself Illini Warrior is particularly vile. Our
children sometimes read these articles but my wife says”no more”and I agree.
Those that nit pick almost every article are not helping at all.
Freedom of speech is the best of things but there should be
rules even on blogs.
Why doesn’t a moderator look into this?
Ron
remember it takes two to tango.
nit pick?
Are we supposed to just think that the articles are spot on. “No”.
What if an article has something in it that some one dose not agree about should they just except the article or question it to make sure it is or is not.
I myself fill that each person that reads the article should look and then give a respond to it. Post or thumbs up or thumbs down.
But, to say every one that nit picks the article is not doing good for the site or for the person reading it. I disagree.
There is a lot of good in, nit picking things.
Please don’t ask that there be more rules. Way to many already.
“Freedom” key word. Lets in joy what we have left.
Tomorrow they may all be gone.
Thank you
@Ron
Claude already knows about Illini Warrior. Apparently there’s an ongoing battle between him and “Kay”. Apparently Kay has already admitted to being a troll that likes to poke people until she gets a response. Her favourite target being IW. Those kinds of things just diminish the experience for us on this page and really have no place here. As you say sometimes kids come here and read the comments. It’s our responsibility as adults to set a good example for them and the aforementioned people do not. I’m only human, Ron, and every once in a while (not very often;)) I’ll lose it and give people heck for some of the silliness they come up with. Even then I try and be very careful not to use profanity while still trying to make my point. As for the trolls, Ron, if I realize they are trolling I just ignore them and not respond to them. It’s a waste of my time and energy. Hopefully after a while of them “talking to the hand” they’ll go away and seek richer fields elsewhere. I know that’s not the exact saying but I can’t recall right now. But you do get the idea. If we don’t feed the trolls they’ll go looking for victims somewhere else. At least I hope so. In these perilous times like-minded people, more than ever, need to stick together. We can’t let the globalists divide us. Then it’s easier for them to conquer us. All the best. Stay safe.
@ chris
We agree and We disagree.
We all have a life. I’m sure.
We know that the author was just showing how to make bread.
That’s why We disagree and then We agree.
Get use to it.
That is Life…
My sister has been having good success making quick breads in straight sided regular canning jars. She bakes the bread in the canning jars and before the bread is ready to be taken out of the oven, the lids are heated in order to soften the rubber seal. As soon as the jars are taken out of oven, the lids are popped on. As they cool, the lids convex and seal.
@ Sagebrush Lin
Say Lin, can you give a recipe for your sisters canning jar bread and how much do you put in the jars.
I would like to have it for my recipe book.
Sounds interesting.
Thank you.
This is not a prepper type recipe, just happens to be my favorite. I will have to ask for my sister’s Boston brown bread recipe tomorrow because she is in a different time zone.
Maple Banana Bread
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 egg
2 ripe bananas
1/2 tsp. maple extract (opt. vanilla)
3 Tbl. Milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
Salt
1/4 cup chopped walnut or pecans (or more)
3 Tbl. white sugar if choosing to sprinkle on top
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease the inside of jars with coconut oil.
In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and maple syrup. Beat in the egg and bananas, leaving a few small chunks. Stir in the maple extract and milk. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Stir in the banana mixture until just moistened.
Two options at this point, mix the nuts into the batter or pour the batter into the pan and sprinkle the nuts and sugar on top.
Bake 50 minutes in a preheated oven or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Adjust the 50 minutes according to jar size.
Optional glaze
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 Tbl. lemon juice
@Sagebrush Lin
Thank you for the recipe. I like banana bread.
I will try it.
I will ck back for your sisters recipe.
Thank you again.
Hi, Lin. That sounds like a really yummy recipe. 🙂 I’m not a big fan of either maple or vanilla. Any ideas on what I could use in their place? Would almond work? Like almond flavour. I wonder if we could throw peanut butter in there. Or melted chocolate. Just trying to get away from the maple flavour. Even though I live in the land of the maple trees not a big fan of maple syrup so I’m trying to think of a banana something combo that would work for me. Wonder what else would go with bananas? Any thoughts?
To add to the above comment regarding canning quick breads, I have been reading various gov. type sites that warn of botulism. What is cited on their site is the speculative science but no real data. But, to be sure, do your own research.
One person commented on one site that she pressure canned the bread, another used a water bath canning process. Several said that they just kept the jars in a cool basement after no pressure canning or water bath canning.
Each person considering canning quick breads should do their own research and come to their own conclusions as there is a lot of conflicting information out there.
are you baking in a loaf pan or jars? you mention both. what size jars and how much batter–half-way to the shoulder? and as i has egg in it i would pressure can. great idea!
dweiss
Diane,
The canning jars were filled half-way up and baked, without a lid, in the oven. As soon as they came out of the oven, the lids were placed on and with the cooling down, they pulled in to seal. I am still on the fence when it comes to long term storage. There is a lot of conflicting information out there. Most of what i read, people did not use a pressure canner. The official gov. advice is to eat them with a week but people on line have said they kept theirs in the basement for a year. My sister ate a couple of jars a month later with no ill effect. She did not pressure can the ones she tried, though she did make some Boston brown bread and pressure canned it. I gave my pressure canner to my son so, I haven’t tried that method.
I think that you are wise to go ahead and pressure can it for safety.
We grow yellow summer squash. The output is amazing. Too much to can and way too much to eat. So we clean it, dehydrate it, and make flour out of it. We use it to bake breads, cookies, brownies, etc. We have also made flour a few times out of acorns. That was A LOT of work and time. We tried cattails too. But we find that yellow squash is the answer… at least for us. And the easiest way to make flour.
Tee do you have to make adjustments using your squash flour vs normal grain flours?
Could you give us for example a bread recipe using squash flours?
Thanks and be Blessed
Hi Michael,
I only have used that &%$ed bread machine to make bread. But i alsways use the amount of flour that a recipe calls for. We made pecan cookies last week. They came out awesome. The recipe actually is on an index card and it is in Slovak. But my husband made almond butter and we used that instead of regular butter. He is the chef in the house. I cut the onions and and vegetsbles. I
bone the meats. He cooks. It works out well.
10 min of actual hands on is probably pretty close….a little misleading but kind of true, I let my bread rise 3 times sometimes it might take 3 + hours for a 15 -20 lbs batch.
I have made this recipe over the past few years, it’s a very recipe to make.
@liz,
How does it taste? Did you mean it was easy? I have a bread maker that one of my neighborgs gave me. I have made bread machine bread like 6 times. It is always too dense. I am looking for light and airy bread.
Same here Tee. Also have a bread machine and haven’t had much luck with it. Don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Still works better for me when I make bread by hand. More work but turns out way better.
Armin,
My sister, who uses her bread machine all the time adds a dough conditioner.
Bread Dough Enhancer
4 Cups Powdered Milk
3/4 Cup Lecithin Granules
3 Heaping Tablespoons Vitamin C Powder
2 Tablespoons Ginger
3 Tablespoons Cornstarch
A. Blend all the ingredients together until smooth.
B. Store in an airtight container on your pantry shelf.
C. Use 2 teaspoons of enhancer in your bread dough. Add when adding flour to the dough mix. For a batch of 5 loaves of bread, use 3 Tablespoons.
Commercial bakers use dough enhancers but the products they use are not very appetizing, such as the dough enhancer used in some commercial pizza dough is from a CCP product made from duck feathers and/or human hair.
@Sagebrush Lin
Thank you very much for that, Lin. A dough conditioner. Son of a gun! First I’ve heard of it. Will have to give it a try. Paid a darn good buck for that bread machine. Had high hopes for it. Don’t wanna throw it out. My neighbor across the street churns out machine bread like they’re running a bakery. They basically HAVE to make their own bread as they can’t eat ANY fibre and have to use special flour. I suppose it would be more expensive for them if they had to buy fibre free bread all the time. Feel bad for them. They really like salad and can’t eat any. We all have our burdens to bear. Up here bread and food prices still really good especially if you buy them on the specials. Shelves are still well stocked, Knock on wood. Heinz and Kraft have already warned us that prices are expected to jump in the new year. So I’ve been prepping as much as possible in the last few months. It may sound funny but I’m actually running out of room. I suppose that’s a good thing though. Having to be very creative to stash all this stuff so it’s not so visible. Again, thanks for that great recipe. Will definitely have to try it. My next big project is making a trifle for Christmas using condensed milk instead of fresh. Will have to experiment with small batches to see if it’s even feasible. May this sentient universe of ours bless you and keep you. 😉
tee- if you don’t have ingredients on hand for the conditioner, use bread flour, say a one-lb loaf takes 4 c flour, use 3 c wh. wheat, all-purpose, etc., to one cup bread flour. if you need to add addt’l flour, use the bread flour, adding 1/2 c at a time until no longer sticky but elastic and smooth. also be certain you have enough yeast and the least amount of salt. salt kills yeast, so a 1:3 ratio is best. so 1 tsp of salt to 3 tsp of yeast. be sure the water is not too warm either. adjust your proportions until you get the crumb (light and airy) you want. it’s all good. dense bread makes great breadcrumbs and croutons.
Deiane: If gluten intolerant, 1/3 corn starch will hold noodles together. Xanthan gum and gaur bean gum will make bread dough act like it has gluten. Happy New Year! niio
Nope, too many of us are gluten intolerant. But, if not, then please brush the top of the dough with egg whites, and put a pan of water under the rack when baking the bread. This makes it crusty. French bread takes 7 hours of rising, then punching down before baking, but it’s worth the effort–if you can eat wheat 🙂 niio
Red,
I have noticed that many of the WW2 cookbooks have recipes that do not use wheat because of rationing. I would guess that you already have a supply of recipes that work for you but, maybe, you’d find these the WW2 ones interesting.
Sage,
ohhhhh my. I will never eat pizza again. There is something wrong with those CCP. OH… quick story. I keep my blood glucose level between 70 and 120 ALL THE TIME. There is no compromise. Doing so has kept me alive for over 50 years so I am not changing. But, we had an event to go to last night and we ate Japanese food. I counted the carbs and bolused accordingly. Something very odd happened. I got home, checked my level, it was 118. I got in bed. Checked my infusion site like I do every night. Said my prayers and kissed my husband. Only I felt odd. I checked my level again and I was 307. I freaked out. I did a finger prick to confirm. I was over 300. My level raised almost 200 points in 20 minutes. I injected (I RARELY EVER INJECT because my pump infuses me constantly). I checked my site again. Slowly I came back down and landed at 87. What the heck do they put in Japanese fried rice??????
@ Sagebrush Lin
Are you allergic to MSG. That is a taste inhancer that is used. .
Just wondering.
Tee,
That is terrible about your numbers shooting up so high! Absolutely scary! There are so many ingredients we know little about in our foods. I would imagine that even the cooks themselves don’t know the real origin of some of their ingredients. I used to live in a more metropolitan area and would sometimes go to a Japanese restaurant for sushi and some things that were actually cooked. 😉 It was always so good but that was then. Who knows what people are doing today to stay within their budgets. I don’t eat out that much and I even do a lot of cooking for the dog, particularly after I found out that the pet food industry is so secretive about where their products come from. One company had their shipping lading bill going to their banker from their Indonesian supplier because they didn’t want anyone looking at the shipping reports knowing where their products are from.
My sister contracted Dengue Fever (Break Bone Fever) while in a tropical country. When she came back home, it was close to her birthday so I baked a cake and decorated it. Some of the frosting was pink because I used red dye. That cake caused a relapse for my sister. She, again, had to endure the pain level as if her bones were breaking. The food dye had red dye no. 40 in it. After her severe reaction, I did some research. It is also called cochineal extract – cockroach extract. The cockroach larva, originally from Peru, produce a red color. My guess is that somehow the parasite on the mosquito that caused the Dengue Fever is related to the cockroach larva.
307… That number is just way too far up there.
Sage: Yo! Depression era cooking/wwii is cool how women out-thought the lack. Genius! Until post-war, corn meal and cornflour were common. Wheat was called the rich man’s grain, and diabetes then the rich man’s disease. Prior to discovering people had problems with gluten, bead was more interesting and varied in form. niio
Tee: Mom was an uncontrollabe diabetic. When we got off gluten, she came to live with us. She griped about no crackers or bread, and I was always treating cracked skin on hands and heels. She was in and out of the hospital for heart problems and cholesterol. It took about 10 days, but she started to go to church again, and wedding parties, dancing (she was about 70). She finally decided I was out of diapers and stopped griping when she realized the only time she had relapses was after eating gluten. Not long after that, the docs worried because she gained 50 lbs from eating too much candy and non-gluten bread. Cholesterol was down to a good range. Sugar stabilized at 120, even after eating. niio
Has anyone made cinnamon rolls from this recipe ? I just made this recipe and it’s HUGE ! I can’t wait for it to come out of the oven !
You’re making me hungry, Becca. Cinnamon rolls one of my favourite. You’ll have to try apple/cinnamon turnovers with this recipe and see if it works. 🙂
Armin: You You are making me hungry 🙂 Apples make food ambrosia. niio
@Sagebrush Lin,
We also, rarely, if ever, eat at restaurants or anywhere other than home. My husband built us an outside kitchen and we cook over wood almost all the time. And we sit around the wood fire to keep warm. Our outdoor kitchen has a roof so we cook and eat out there 12 months per year. We also have a propane stove and a wood oven.
Now, dog food. We once had four dogs at once while looking for homes for a couple of them. A friend convinced us that only high end dog food should be fed to dogs. Ziwi Peak was like $15 per pound. Even Acana was over $3 per pound. We can get chicken leg quarters for $1.25 per pound. We bone the quarters and make bone meal. We sear the meat (we used to feed our dogs raw chicken, but they got sick once so our vet asked us to sear the meat). They have not become ill since. We mix the chicken with garden veggies. We add bone meal and vitamins (per recommendation). So far, so good. We lost a 16 year old mix last year. I wish we started him on a non dog food diet. Maybe he would still be with us.
Tee,
What fortunate dogs live at your house!
This bit of information most likely does not relate to your incident of super high blood sugar but one of my relatives kept spiking into the 200’s. She finally went to the doctor and found that she had a long term bladder infection. She had been busy with huge life changes and had ignored her health. Once the bladder infection was cleared up, no more huge spikes in her blood sugar.
Sage: I get bladder infections once in a while. A very old relative said he never gets them anymore, or stomach flu. He chews tobacco. Unless going hiking (it keeps the mouth moist and I live in AZ) I don’t. But, a little, about a half-inch off the end of a cigarette (do not eat the paper!) knocked back a severe case of stomach flu the other night. It took a second piece before I could sleep. If you live in the sticks or even the ‘burbs, you can raise old-style tobacco like Pima. Native Seed Search and other places sell the seeds. It should self-sow. Mind, if deer or rabbits get into it, they’ll wipe it out. niio
First, I want to say sorry about your sister getting break bone fever. That poor women. I hope she is well now. I just had the one spike. I have been back to 80-120 since. I just don’t want to be one of those type 1s who goes blind and has kidney failure in their 60s (I am getting close to that age). I ask God to keep the husband and I well everyday. I try to eat right (i am heavy though). I also think I might have acid reflux (i am doing a ginger and vinegar try). I really would not mind living forever… As long as the husband lives along with me.
i would love to have an outdoor kitchen. If I give you my email can you send me pictures/designs
i am building one for the house. Should be nice to keep the heat out of the hosue and have a place to do some summer / fall / spring canning
rachael: we keep a separate address for unknowns to write to. It’s good for interesting but unwanted spam, as well. niio
Of course i will send you pics. But it is very basic. Just a sink and stove and wood oven under an awning. It not all stone and marble like the ones I have seen in the nicer neighborhoods. Now they have some fancy stuff. I try not to envy. I know it is wrong. But these people who live on the river just north of us have SO MUCH. We got to know several families because a few of them hired my huband to work on their guns. They have invited us to their neighborhood parties. First, they have multi million dollar houses on the water here. They all have places in Manhattan, and then they have their southern home. NC, Florida, Virginia. I think of how hard my husband has worked all his life and I wonder how they all have so much. OK. I am done whining. I will happily send photos.
I just did a 30 day estimate on a loaf per day.
Butter = 1.9 lbs
Surer = 1.9 lbs
salt = 2.4 lbs
yeast = 30 packages 2.1/4. teaspoons
flour = 52 lbs
Now this is a recipe that I just found on the net. Got the measurement and then, times that by 30.
Times that by 12 will give you a years worth of bread.
Times by 12 months
butter = 22.8 lbs
sugar = 22.8 lbs
salt = 28.8 lbs
yeast 360 packages
flour 624 lbs
Dose any prepper, have just one yrs worth of products, for just bread alone.
Just saying…
What about sourdough? 1 pack yeast, unless making rice noodle dough, then koji is best.
Thank you Claude for your great bread recipe , I will try it, just learning to make bread as a prepper and really enjoy your articles.Your site is a great one for us beginning preppers ,and really learn from it ,,thank you !! Lots of great info !! Sad that you have ( professional ) preppers that seem to keep beating you up on your articles, and they seemly know better,we will look past that and continue to go withyour down home prepper advise. Thank You .
Hey All! I recently learned about the importance of iodine supplementation in our diets. There are basically two forms; one topical only and one that can be ingested. Many decades back, commercial bakers used iodine as their bread conditioner, instead of the bromide used today. Bromide is a poison. Please investigate for yourselves.
Should you want to use iodine as a homemade bread conditioner, use the lugol’s only, not betadine or similar from the pharmacy. Two drops of 2% or one of 5% per 2 lb recipe. with wet (ie water). Undetectable in taste or appearance.