How To Calculate Bread For A Year

In an effort to get some food storage in order I decided to figure out how much I would need to store of the ingredients necessary to make my homemade bread for an entire year.  (You can find my homemade bread recipe HERE).

I did this based around how many loaves of bread I want to make in a week.  Right now I make about two loaves of bread a week.  I am sure that would be more if we were living completely on what we store, but you have to start somewhere.

Below you can see the spreadsheet I created.

Change the Number of Loaves Per Week to Calculate the Amount to store for a Year
	1 Loaf		Loaves Per Week
			2
Wheat Flour	6.50	cups	676.00	cups	2,704.00	ounces	169.00	pounds
Gluten	0.25	cups	26.00	cups	130.00	ounces	8.13	pounds
Yeast	0.09	cups	9.75	cups	52.00	ounces	3.25	pounds
Honey	0.41	cups	42.64	cups	511.25	ounces	31.95	pounds
Oil	0.25	cups	26.00	cups	208.00	ounces	13.00	gallons
Salt	0.04	cups	4.33	cups	41.60	ounces	2.60	pounds
Water	3.00	cups	312.00	cups	2,496.00	ounces	156.00	gallons

The first column shows the ingredients based upon one loaf of bread.  In the second column you can put in the number of loaves per week and it will calculate the amounts needed in cups, ounces and pounds/gallons.

I found this to be helpful because some of the food storage calculators I have used had estimates that were too low for the honey, oil and yeast and none of them have recommendations for gluten.

If you think that it would be helpful to play with the spreadsheet to make your own calculations you can access it HERE.  You could even modify it to fit your own recipe by changing the amounts in the first column.

I would love to know what you think, even if you think I'm a bit nutty for putting this together.

The Best Banana Bread I Ever Made

I had a few nasty brownish bananas sitting around this weekend.  That left me with only two choices: make banana bread or throw them out.  The outcome was totally dependent on how much energy my pregnant body had available.  So, I made my decision.  Skip the dishes and make the bread.  My kitchen is a mess but the bread was a.maz.ing.

Want to know my secret?  Lemon cubes.  (To find out what a lemon cube is just follow the link or this one.)

You see my recipe for banana bread calls for lemon juice.  I decided to throw in a lemon cube in its place.  With the extra zest in with the lemon juice it made the bread zingy.  Oh, it was delicious.  And because I was in a healthy mood I threw in flax seeds.  This made the bread a bit chewy.  Even my husband commented on how good it was.  Here's how I made it.

1 c. white flour
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
2 T. flax seeds
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. butter melted and cooled
1 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
2 brown bananas
1 lemon cube or 2 T. lemon juice with a little zest
2 t. vanilla

Mix it all together and throw in the oven for baby and me!  I mean, place it in greased and floured mini bread  pans or muffin tins or a cake pan or whatever you have.  Bake at 350 until a toothpick comes clean.

This post is linked at sixsistersstuff.com, sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com and Me And My Sweets

All Hail the Blendtec! Yes, it can grind your wheat!

Photo from here.

So, my sis has one of these blenders.  They are not cheap.  She has admitted to me that one of the reasons she bought it was because it could grind wheat.  So she invited me over to help her make my whole wheat bread.

The first thing we had to do was grind the wheat.  It can only do 2 cups of wheat at a time, but then it only takes 1 minute.  I confess, I was skeptical.  But, DANG!  That blender can blend wheat flour!  To say I was impressed is an understatement.  The flour was super fine and soft.  And it makes delicious bread.  I know because after making bread we made pizza dough for dinner.

So all you Blendtec users (Fiona, I'm thinking of you) bust out your blender and make yourself some whole wheat bread!!

Making Whole Wheat Bread

This post is dedicated to my sister Genevieve.  She's in NY.  Hi Bin!

If you are going to live off food storage you have to be able to make your own bread.  I think of bread making as a life skill. Sort of like changing tire.  Everyone ought to know how.

I make two loaves at a time because that's all that will fit in my KitchenAid.  That means I make bread at least once a week.  It's been more lately since the hubby has taken to eating PBJ sandwiches for lunch.  (Or as my three year old says "smawiches").  

I grind my own wheat for this bread, but you could use store bought whole wheat flour.  

1.  Add 4 c. whole wheat flour, 1/3 c. vital wheat gluten, 1 1/2 T. instant yeast to your bowl.  Mix a bit.  

 2.  Then add 3 c. warm water.  It supposed to be about 110 degrees.  I think of this as a nice hot shower.  If it's too hot for you, it's too hot for the yeast.  (Just so you know I have never measured the temperature of my shower but now I am thinking about it . . . )  Let this mixture sit for 10 minutes.  By the way, this is called the "sponge".  I don't know why.

3.  While the sponge is sponging, add 1/4 c. oil to a measuring cup.  Then add honey until it reaches 2/3 c.  I came up with this measurement when I decided 1/4 c. honey was to little an 1/2 c. was too much.  I have thought about trying to figure out exactly how much honey it is but I haven't.  Well, for you I will do the math.  [Thinking . . . thinking . . . using the calculator on my computer. . . ]  It's 6 T. + 2 t. honey.  Or 1/3 c. + 1 T. + 1 t.  See, it's much easier to do it in a glass measuring cup.  Then add 2 t. salt.  I took the picture after the salt, that's why the oil looks like it's almost to 3/4 c.

4.  After 10 minutes the sponge will be all spongy.  Add the measuring cup of honey, oil and salt.

5.  Turn on the oven to warm while you are doing this next part.  You will use the mixer with the dough hook on a speed of 1-2 for 6-7 minutes.  You are going to add approximately 2-3ish cups of whole wheat flour.  You want to add enough flour so that it doesn't stick to the sides and forms a ball of dough.  I find I have to add a little bit of flour every minute or so to keep it from sticking.

6.  Grease your pans with spray oil.  (Just so you know I tried to use a mister and the bread stuck.  Only the commercially canned stuff works.  Such a bummer.)  Then grease your hands with spray oil.  This will make the dough easier to handle.  Split the dough in half, form loaves and place in your pans.  I forgot to take a picture of the bread before the rising.

7.  Place the pan in the oven and turn the oven OFF.  Wait about 15 minutes until your dough is double in size and looks like this:

8.  Turn your oven up to 350 and bake for 35 minutes.  Use a pastry brush to spread butter on the top of the bread.  Seriously the best part.

It usually takes me just over an hour to make this bread.  And it's so good right out of the oven.  My 20 month old points at it as says "num num."

Cornbread from Popcorn: Yes, It Can Be Done!

I read somewhere on the Internet that you should store popcorn in place of cornmeal because it will keep longer.  The popcorn can then be ground into cornmeal.  I decided to test this advice and make cornbread from ground popcorn.

Here is my awesome Mill & Mix.  It was my grandma's.  It's cool because you can adjust the space between the stones for grinding.

I thought I would try and make the cornmeal more coarse than my wheat flour, so I opened the stones a bit to grind the popcorn.  Next time I might keep it pretty fine because there were some hard chunks in the final product.

I used my same cornbread recipe and it came out great.  I forgot to take a picture of the baked bread because I just jumped right in.  So, there you go.  You can get cornmeal from popcorn.  Fancy that.

Self Reliance Experiment: More Recipes

Yesterday was a day of trying new recipes.  I have been looking for a chance to make this bread recipe, which has beans in it.  It turned out delicious!  Bryce said he liked it more than the whole wheat bread I make (which is saying a lot).  I used half white flour and half wheat flour with the bean puree.  I didn't bother grinding any beans for bean flour because my grinder is in storage, but I just may try that some day.

We also had a carrot soup for dinner, which probably would have been better if I had stuck to the recipe.  I made it in the crock pot and about half way through the day I thought it tasted bland so I spiced it up by adding Derek's jalapeño elk salami.  And spice it up it did!  Good thing we had some sour cream to cool it off.  It turned out ok, but I won't be jumping on that recipe again.  Especially since I am almost out of carrots. (I wonder if you could make a whole soup out of dehydrated carrots . . . )

Today we are having a pantry staple: taco soup.  Here is what I threw in the crock pot this morning:

1 onion and 2 cloves garlic cooked until softened
1 lb. elk (You can use beef) browned
1 can black beans, drained
1 can great northern beans, drained
1 can corn, drained
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can (15 oz) can tomato sauce
1 can diced green chilies
2 cans beef broth (omit these and it will be thicker like a chili)
2 Tb. Emeril's Essence (You can use one pkg of taco seasoning.  I just happened to have some Essence to use up and I have to say, it's quite delicious.)

Heat in the crock pot on low all day.  Top with shredded cheese, sour cream, sliced black olives, Fritos, etc.

I am sure all of this will get more interesting when I start running out of things.