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.

Cinnamon Applesauce Pancakes/Waffles

Remember how clear back in October I mentioned that I had made some pancakes like these?  Well, I never got around to the post.  They were really too good not to share and we made them again this morning only as waffles.  The recipe works well for either pancakes or waffles.

I am also dedicating this post to my sis, Charlotte, because they use applesauce.  (Now you have something else to do with all that canning we did last year.)

Cinnamon Applesauce Pancakes/Waffles

1 c. wheat flour (Char, you can use all white if you don't want to break out your Blentec)
1/2 c. white flour
1/4 c. corn meal
1 T. baking powder
2 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
1/2 t. salt
1/4 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. milk
 1/4 c. oil
1/2 c. appleasuace

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

Healthy Chocolate Chunk Zucchini Muffins

The other day a friend gave me some zucchini.  I thought about using it for meal or a side dish like in this, but I knew all the boys in my house would prefer chocolate.  I used the recipe here as a starting point and then made some substitutions to make them a bit more healthy.  These were so delicious that they didn't last long. Now I need to make a second batch.

Healthy Chocolate Zucchini Muffins/Bread

1 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 c. white flour
1/2 c. cocoa
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1 1/2 c. sugar
3 eggs
1/2 c. oil
1/2 c. applesauce
2 t. vanilla
2 c. shredded zucchini
1 c. chocolate chunks

Mix dry ingredients together.  Mix wet ingredients together.  Combine the two mixes.  Bake at 350 in muffin tins or bread pans until an inserted tooth pick comes clean.

Cardamom Spiced Applesauce Muffins

I have lots of powdered butter to play with.  I don't use it that much, so I decided to try it as a butter replacement in baking.  I started with a favorite recipe: cardamom spiced applesauce muffins.  The recipe is super rich because it calls for both butter and oil.  Since it has two oils, I figured replacing the butter with powdered butter couldn't hurt too much.

You don't need powdered butter to try this recipe.  It is super delicious on it's own.  But Hubby did say these were the best I had made.  Perhaps he was just hungry.  You can see that some of them appeared to have oozed something.  I don't think this was the powdered butter.  I think it might have been the sugar, which is very old and a bit lumpy.  In any event, they tasted great and didn't last long around the house.

Cardamom Spiced Applesauce Muffins

1 1/2 c. white sugar
1 stick butter melted (or 1/2 c. powdered butter)
1/2 c. oil
2 eggs
2 c. applesauce
2 t. baking soda
2 t. cinnamon
1 t. cardamom
1/2 t. cloves
1 t. salt
1/2 t. black pepper (weird, I know.  But don't skip it!)
2 1/2 c. flour (I think I did 1 1/2 c. whole wheat with 1 c. white.  Maybe it was the other way around.)

Mix together ingredients and scoop into lined muffin tin.  Bake at 350 until toothpick comes out clean.  Makes about 24 muffins.

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!!

Apple Pie Oatmeal Bars

Last fall I canned some Apple Pie Jam.  It was a bit unintentional as I was going for an apple conserve with big chunks of apple but couldn't get the apple's to suspend in the syrup so I gave up and attacked the whole pot with my immersion blended.  I called the result apple pie jam.  It turns out I'm not a big fan of apple pie jam on toast.  So I now have the burden pleasure of using up the jam.

I decided that this recipe for oatmeal bars courtesy of the Pioneer Woman was made for my jam.  I'd like to pretend this is healthy since I used whole wheat flour, but it has nearly two cube of butter.  So I'll just enjoy it for what it is--pure deliciousness.  You know the crumb topping on muffins.  This is like a bunch of that topping with a hint of spicy apple pie.  It's really good. 

1 3/4 sticks of butter (14 Tablespoons)

1 c. brown sugar

1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour

1 1/2 c. rolled oats

1 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

12 oz. apple pie jam

Cream butter and brown sugar.  Add in the whole wheat flour, rolled oats, baking powder and salt.  Press half of mixture in 9x13 pan.  Spread jam over top.  Sprinkle with the other half of the mixture.  Press lightly.  Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. 

Let cool completely before cutting.  This is important because they are too gooey to cut.  Or you can be impatient like me and eat them hot.  I was wishing I had some ice cream with this one.