RetroRevolution

Making the move to self sufficiency and a simpler lifestyle is simple if you start easy and start small.  A quick step is to begin making your own bread.  I started making our bread for daily use about 3 years ago.  Since doing this my girls have become bread snobs they don’t like store bought bread anymore.  I still haven’t converted them to whole wheat bread, but that is a small goal for the coming year.

Making your own bread is actually pretty simple and not too time consuming.  Especially when you approach the task with a little forethought.  I have made our daily use bread with a bread machine, by hand the traditional way, and by hand using a no knead method.  When I make the bread with the bread machine, I typically make two or three loaves a week every 2 to 3 days.  I use a very simple recipe and it takes me about five minutes to get it prepped and the machine makes the loaf in about 3 hours.  If I am making bread with the no knead method, I will make enough dough on a Saturday night, and then bake the loaves that it will make over the course of the week.  And occasionally on a weekend I will make a special artisan loaf by hand.

This is a simple step to eliminating one link of dependency in The System.  Buy some flour.  You can get 25 pounds of bread flour at a restaurant supply house for $10.00.  Get a pound of yeast from the same place.  It will be less than $3.00.  That is more than enough flour and yeast to make about 25 loaves.  I recognize that you will need to add a bit of sugar, salt, and possibly oil to this, but you can make a loaf of homemade bread for about 50 cents a loaf.  I don’t see bread go on sale for much less than a dollar a loaf very often.  So this is a deal even if you forget the lack of chemicals in this loaf or how wonderful it will taste compared to the industrial loaf you get at the store.

All by taking this one simple step you have begun a journey to a larger and better world.  First you have eliminated paying taxes on the bread.  Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that there are no taxes on food.  You probably had to drive to the store and you paid taxes on the gas to buy the bread.  The people who made the bread paid income taxes.  The company that sold the bread had to pay taxes on their profits.  This happens at every stage in the production process.

By taking this one simple step of baking your own bread, you can have bread when you need it.  Try going to the store and buying 50 loaves of bread and storing them for a year.  Assuming that you use a loaf of bread a week you would need to freeze about 47 loaves.  This would probably take 2 or 3 large chest refrigerators filled to capacity to store that much bread, and when it came time to use the last 25 loaves, they would probably be terribly freezer burnt.  Even at a dollar a loaf this would be an investment of at least $50.00.  Conversely, if you make your own bread, you can get 50 pounds of flour, a pound of yeast and some salt and sugar, and store it in two 5 gallon buckets and be all set with bread for the year.  The first loaf will be just as fresh and yummy as the last.

And finally by making your own bread you have taken a step to doing things for your self on an almost daily basis.  The sense of pride and accomplishment from this simple act will grow like a weed in you.  You will want to start doing more and more for yourself.  It will become the cornerstone in your homestead and new way of life.

I’ve been experimenting with the sourdough starter this week.  I have the starter going just fine.  I keep it in the refrigerator and feed it every two days.  I think some time next week when it is a little stronger I am going to divide it again to have an additional colony growing.  The loaves for the oven are turning out just fine.  Actually much better than fine they are great.  The trials in the bread machine are not faring as well.  It’s hard to get the rise time correct.  The wild yeasts in the sourdough starter don’t rise fast enough for the machine’s standard timing.  I’ve reprogrammed it for some longer rise cycles, but the strength of the starter varies from one batch to the next.

We had some family friends over last night and after the game we played was finished I added the sponge to the flour, salt, and sugar so it could start rising overnight.  They also make their own bread, preserve food, and have a garden.  Even with all this commonality, they asked me what was wrong with commercial yeast.  Granted some of the things I do are because there is something inherently wrong with them.  Homemade bread vs. store bought industrial bread; tastes better and fewer chemicals.  Eating local vs. food shipped from the other side of the world; less energy per item, biodiversity, etc…But the real reason I do it is so that I know I could do it if I had to.  That is the real reason I do most things.  I read an awful lot about sourdough bread before the first time I tried to make it.  It wasn’t until I started making it that I discovered some of the nuances about the craft.  I do it so that should I need to make bread without commercial yeast, I know I could.

How many of you have tried to start a fire without matches or a lighter?  Most people know it can be done.  Fewer still could name at least 3 different ways of doing it.  And an even smaller percentage has actually started a fire without matches.  There is nothing wrong with using matches to start a fire.  It’s pretty easy.  Dare I say down right efficient.  It’s a real pain in the but to start a fire with a bow and drill.  That’s rubbing two sticks together for those of you that didn’t make it to scouts as a kid.  It takes me a long time to start a fire that way.  I only do it about once every 20 years or so.  If I needed to I could, but I don’t need to do it every day.  If I had never tried it, I bet I couldn’t actually do it.  There is a lot of subtlety that goes into rubbing those two stick together.  You need wood that is not too hard and not too soft.  You need just the right tension on the bow.  You need to know when the ember has actually formed.  I would not want to need a fire right now and have never tried to start one with a bow and drill.  Several hours later I would still be freezing cold.

The bottom line is practice these skills.  Don’t just read about them.  Get into the kitchen, or the garden, or the orchard, and start doing it.  Know for certain that “You could do it if you had to”!

Once you have a starter colony going you can use the starter to make a sponge.  The sponge is used to give the yeast colony a chance to grow quickly and provide enough active yeast to produce a loaf of bread.  To get the sponge started mix 1/2 of a batch of your starter with 1 cup of water and 1 cup of flour.  Again the water must not be too hot or too cold.  If the water is too hot you will kill the colony, if it is too long it will take the colony a long time strengthen.

Once you mix the sponge it needs to sit and mature for 2 to 8 hours.  The sponge will be complete when it is frothy and smells sour.  The longer the sponge is allowed to sit and ferment, the more sour the final bread will become.  Once you have the sponge fermented and ready you will need to mix it with the following ingredients.

• 3 cups of flour
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1.5 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt

Mix well and knead as you would any other loaf of bread.  Remember that your flour will have a varying amount of moisture already and you might need to add more or less to have the proper consistency loaf.  The formed loaf should be allowed to rise until doubled in size.  A sourdough loaf may take much longer to rise than a loaf made using modern yeasts.  Once doubled the loaf should be punched down and permitted to rise a second time.  Bake in a very hot oven, 450, for about 35 minutes.

I’ve stated that we make all of our own bread.  I recently made a batch of sourdough starter.  Sourdough starter is a way of making bread if you don’t have any commercial yeast available.  It also is a very flavorful loaf of bread.

Getting the starter going is easier than you might think. Mix a cup of flour and a cup of water in a bowl stir well and let it sit for 24 hours.  The water should be warm, but not hot, and the bowl should be left open.  After 24 hours divide the mixture in half and add 1/2 cup or water and 1/2 cup of flour to each of the new halves.  These are in effect two starters at this point.  Every 24 hours divide the starters and add 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water to each.  If the volume of the mixture grows too large, and you do not want to discard the surplus, you can use it in pancakes or biscuits.

After 48 hours but within 7 days you should have a bubbly frothy mixture.  The bubbles are carbon dioxide being released by the yeast eating the flour.  If you don’t have the bubbles by 7 days you probably aren’t going to get them after all.  Start again.  If you want to give your starter a kick start you can add a bit of commercial yeast.  The flavor at first will not be as strong, but eventually any wild yeast in the area will take over the colony and the flavor will change.

The living starter can be stored in the refrigerator and fed and divided every 3 to 5 days.  You may get a bit alcohol water forming on top.  It can be poured off or stirred in at your discretion.  If you stir it in, your starter will have more flavor.  I suggest having two or three starters going at a time.  If one of the starters is a bit weak when you make a loaf of bread with it you can discard it and divide one of your strongest starters.

Tomorrow I’ll present a recipe for the sponge to make a sourdough loaf and discuss ways to use the bread machine to make both the sponge and loaf!

Homemade Croutons

A skill essential to homesteading is using the most of everything.  The wife often chuckles at me when I tell her to save the container that the peanuts came packaged in, or not to throw away that box because I might be able to use it for something in the garage.  Granted, I don’t have unlimited space so there is a need to have a strong feeling about a use in the immediate future before I keep it.  Otherwise, I would find myself with nothing but boxes and boxes of…well…boxes!  One of my favorite things to do, to use all of something, is to make homemade croutons; for salads or soups, homemade croutons are the perfect finishing touch.  They are even fun to snack on sometimes.

We make all of our own bread for daily use around here.  Several years ago, we decided that it was time to move past the bland Styrofoam type of bread that you buy at the grocery store, and make our own bread every two or three days.  It wasn’t that much more work than going to the store every two or three days and buying it.  Most of the time we use a bread machine, but every now and then we use the oven.  The goal would be to use the oven in the winter when it helps heat the house and the machine in the summer when we want to keep the house cool, but that doesn’t always work out so well.

By hand or by machine, we often found ourselves with a heel of bread that no one really wanted to eat unless they had

Cutting up the Bread

to.  While there was often a fight over who got the heel when the loaf was right out of the oven, this never seemed to be the case when the loaf was three days old.  At first I started turning the leftover bread into crumbs for use as breading and in meatballs and meatloaves and we still do that some of the time.  I’m not sure what finally clicked that made me realize that these would be perfect for croutons but eventually it did.  It might have actually been one of the wife’s creations.  Regardless, we’ve never regretted it.

Garlic Onion Croutons

• 4 cups of Diced Bread Heels. (6-8 loaf ends usually. Save them in freezer until you have enough.)
• 2 tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 Clove of Garlic Minced
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Paprika
• 1/2 tsp Onion Powder
• 1/2 tsp Oregano

Preheat oven to 400ºF.  Slice Bread into 1/2″ cubes.  Heat oil and garlic  in oven on deep cookie sheet.  Remove cookie sheet from the oven and toss the bread cubes to evenly coat them in the hot oil and garlic mixture.  Sprinkle the spices over the bread cubes.

Unbaked Cubes - Ready to Season

Reduce oven setting to 300ºF and immediately put cubes back in the oven.  Bake for 5 to 10 minutes until just golden brown.  Turn/toss cubes to evenly coat and bake a further 3-5 minutes.  Store in an air tight container.  The goal should be to toast as much moisture out of the bread cubes as possible.

Serve over salad or soup.