Basic Food Storage: Cracked Wheat

Wheat is perhaps the most versatile of the whole grains, at least in the Western world.  But some people are reluctant to store wheat because they haven't yet acquired a wheat grinder.  And you always wonder if you're really going to use it.  So here are some ways to use wheat that do not require a wheat grinder.  A coffee grinder is necessary, but that's not as significant of an expense, especially if you pick one up at a garage sale.

So the first thing to do (after cleaning the coffee out of the coffee grinder) is to put about one-third of a cup of wheat in the coffee grinder.  Let it whirl for a few seconds.

Now you have cracked wheat.

So how do you use it?

• Bread.  Probably the most common way to use it is in bread, about 1/4 cup cracked wheat boiled for 10 minutes in 2/3 cup water.  Let cool before adding to bread recipes.  
• Cereal.  Cracked wheat cereal is also (somewhat) popular.  Boil 1 cup of cracked wheat in 3 cups of water for 15 minutes.  Add milk, bananas, chopped nuts, and brown sugar to taste.
• Hamburger extender.  Boiled cracked wheat can even be used as a hamburger extender, such as in taco meat or meatballs.  This works better with children than with highly suspicious husbands.  Start with smaller amounts and gradually increase.  It also works better in highly seasoned hamburger than plain.  
• "Nuts".  Cooked cracked wheat patted dry looks like chopped nuts on Jell-O salads.

Strawberry Jell-O Salad with Cracked Wheat

1/4 cup cracked wheat
1 small pkg. strawberry Jell-O
1 cup boiling water
1 cup whipped cream or Cool Whip
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups mashed fresh strawberries, or equivalent--frozen, dehydrated or freeze-dried and reconstituted

Boil cracked wheat in 1 cup water for 15 minutes, remove from heat, and drain excess water.  Pour cracked wheat on paper towel to remove excess water.  Set aside.

In a 9x9 pan, dissolve Jell-O in boiling water, stirring until completely dissolved.  Cool until thickened, and then stir in the rest of the ingredients.

Refrigerate until firm or overnight. Serve with a spoonful of whipped cream sprinkled with cooked cracked wheat as your mock nuts.

Links to related posts:
Wheat  
Sprouted wheat   

© 2019, PrepSchoolDaily.blogspot.com 
28 may 2021

Basic Food Storage--French Bread

Bread is the staff of life, but even bread needs to have a little variety to it.  This isn't a recipe blog, and there aren't going to be 40 bread recipes in here.  That would be silly. 

(Update:  Well, call me silly.  But I also wasn't planning to be writing this blog for 6.5+ years.  And by way of information, the latest volume of Good Eats is now available!  Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Cafe, Volume 3:  Making the Most of Grains in Your Food Storage includes nearly 200 recipes for using storage grains to make fabulous foods--breads, crackers, horchata, instant oatmeal mix, and so much more.  As always, you can buy it on Amazon.  However, if you'd like to support the Rader family a little more, you can purchase through our online store at https://rader-resources-llc.square.site/s/shop  I warn, it's not a pretty site or sight, but it does the job until I find someone I'm confident can do the job.  Also, it may take 2-3 weeks to arrive, but Amazon isn't delivering that much faster nowadays, so that may not be important to you.)

But it's good to be able to have at least a little repertoire in our post-apocalyptic cuisine, and more importantly, to be able to make a loaf if we're missing some ingredients found in most bread recipes.  This recipe for French bread uses no eggs and no milk.  It tastes just like French bread is supposed to taste--just as if you bought it from the bakery.  And one of the best things about it--it makes a fabulous pizza crust.  (Yes, as a matter of fact, we will most definitely be indulging in some pizza in the exciting times ahead.) 

French Bread
2 loaves

2 tablespoons yeast
3 cups warm water
1 tablespoon salt
6 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups whole wheat flour
4 cups white flour

Dissolve the yeast in warm water with a pinch of sugar.  Add in the remaining ingredients.  Knead 8-10 minutes.  Place dough in a greased bowl and let rise until doubled.  Punch down and divide into 2 (or more) pieces, depending on size of loaves desired.  Form loaves and place on a greased cookie sheet.  Slash loaves 3-5 times diagonally.  Brush with water and let rise until doubled.  Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

For pizza crust:   After the first rise, divide dough into two or more pieces, depending on the size of pizzas desired.  Roll out dough to desired thickness, top with sauce, cheese, and toppings, and bake at 425 for 15 minutes, or until done.  This also bakes very well in a Dutch oven while camping.

Basic Food Storage--Whole Wheat Bread

Bread is the staff of life.  It is not a doorstop.

Unfortunately, most people produce more doorstops than loaves in the beginning, and then they stop, because one only needs so many doorstops in the house.

Being able to make a nice loaf of bread is one of the most valuable skills to acquire now, and to start now.  It really takes a lot of practice.  Once you've made a few nice loaves and then you start churning out doorstops again, you want to know why.  That only comes with practice.  Sure, Youtubes can help, but it's better to get a true feel for the dough yourself.

So let's jump right in with the recipe.  Instructions, explanations, and tips will be included below.  And if you have any questions, please ask!

Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

2 1/4 cups warm water (about 100 degrees)
1 1/2 tablespoons fast-rising yeast
pinch sugar
1 tablespoon dough enhancer, optional (recipe to be posted tomorrow)
1/2 cup gluten flour
7-8 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup dry milk
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup honey
3 eggs
1 tablespoon salt

Put the warm water, yeast, sugar, dough enhancer, gluten flour, and 1-2 cups of whole wheat flour in your mixing bowl and combine well.  (This is sometimes called a "sponge.")  Let this mixture proof for 15-30 minutes.  Then add in the rest of the ingredients and mix well.   Continue adding flour, if necessary, until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.  Oil your hands and the counter where you will be kneading the dough, re-oiling as necessary.  Do not use flour to prevent sticking, as this may make your bread unnecessarily dry.  Knead for 8-10 minutes, until dough is nice and smooth.  Cover with plastic or a damp cloth and let rise.

When dough has doubled in volume, punch it down, and separate dough into three equal pieces.  Roll each piece into a rectangle, and then starting on the short side, roll it up and pinch ends together to seal.  Repeat with the other two pieces and place each log into a greased bread pan.  (For regular, sandwich-type loaves, you want 4x8" bread pans.)  Let rise until doubled in volume again.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the loaves reaches 190 degrees.  Remove from oven and let cool for ten minutes in the pans.  Then remove from pans to cooling racks and let cool completely.  Store in plastic bags when completely cooled and dry.


Simple, right?

Or not? 


Tips:

Practice, practice, practice.  It takes a lot of experience to make good bread consistently.  At least, it took me a lot of practice.  I've been making all my family's sandwich bread for ten years, and I'm still learning.

I start with water that is about 100 degrees.  Many bakers use water that is a bit warmer.  However, I have found that my Bosch mixer sometimes gets the dough really heated--so warm that it kills the yeast.  So I start with water that is a little cooler than most.  If I were kneading dough by hand, I'd start with warmer water.  (Yes, I know that I will be kneading by hand someday.  But right now my Bosch saves me a lot of time, and more importantly, it spares my thumbs and wrists from tendinitis that would otherwise afflict me.)

If you have never made bread before, or you are really out of practice, start with white flour and gradually substitute in wheat flour.  Or if you are not accustomed to whole wheat, start with white and gradually increase the amount of wheat flour.  White flour is more forgiving and just overall easier to learn with.  Get the overall process right and the kneading and windowpane test right first, and then gradually work in whole wheat flour.

Making bread is much more art than science. The amount of water and flour can vary widely depending on humidity and how you measure your flour--do you spoon it in and level off with a knife, or do you use the measuring cup to scoop the flour so it's a little more packed?



Measure the oil first, and then measure the honey.  This way the honey will slip right out of the previously oiled measuring cup.

Mix the dry milk powder into the flour so you don't get little clumps of dry milk.

I have substituted powdered eggs for fresh numerous times without any problem.

In my experience, the dough sticks more to metal than to plastic bowls.  If I am using a metal bowl, I allow for some stickiness of the dough to the bowl.  In all cases, it is better to have a dough that is too wet rather than too dry.

Once fully kneaded, your dough should be smooth and stretchy.  A really good test for this is the windowpane test.  Take a bit of dough, about the size of a walnut, and using your forefingers and thumbs, stretch it into a square.  Ideally, you should be able to stretch it very thin, definitely enough to see light through it, without breaking.  If you can do this, you are going to have some very nice bread. 


For optimal rising, place a pan of very hot water on the bottom rack of the oven, then place loaves on the center rack.  Close the oven and let loaves rise.  This creates a nice, warm, humid atmosphere for the loaves--the ideal conditions.

When it's time to bake, leave the loaves in the oven but remove the pan of water.  Set temperature to 350 degrees.   Now the timing will vary by oven.  How long it takes is not the issue--when the bread reaches an internal temperature of 190 degrees, it is done, whether it takes 35 minutes or 45 minutes.  For me in my kitchen, with three loaves in the oven, I set the temperature for 350 degrees and the timer for 38 minutes, and my loaves are perfectly baked every time. 

For a soft bread crust, brush loaves with oil or butter after they are baked but still warm.

Do not bag loaves of bread until they are dry and completely cooled.  For best results, use actual bread bags. (I get mine at Pleasant Hill Grain.) Plastic wrap just doesn't work all that well.  And the bags can be re-used several times.  (Unless the bread has gotten moldy.  Then that bag gets tossed.)

This bread baked very well in a sun oven, but the crust was much lighter.  Crust color will not be an indication of doneness.  You will really want an instant-read thermometer for this.

Troubleshooting:

• Loaves raised well, were placed in the oven to bake, and then come out of the oven collapsed.
• Answer:  The loaves were allowed to rise too long--over-proofed.  Next time, put them in the oven a bit sooner.
• Loaves didn't rise well or at all.  
• Answer:  This could be attributed to a few different problems.  
• It could be due to poor yeast.  Try a different yeast.  If you did the initial proofing above with the "sponge," you should have had a very bubbly batter with a yeast-y smell.  If you didn't get that, it's most likely the yeast.  If that happened to me, I wouldn't even bother trying to make bread with that sponge.  Throw it out and start over.  
• The temperature was too high.  High temperatures will kill the yeast.  Make sure your water temperature is at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  An instant read thermometer will be your friend as you learn to make your bread.  Or your bread mixer may have gotten the dough too hot (rare, but it does happen).  Of course, this will not happen with hand-kneading.  
• It could be the wheat.  Experienced bread makers usually blame the wheat before blaming the yeast for a problem in rising.  If wheat was not properly stored, especially if stored at high temperatures, like in a garage or attic (or it could have happened during shipping), it just won't make good bread, no matter what.  (It also won't sprout.)  Do not throw the wheat away.  It will still work for making tortillas and cookies and cracked wheat cereal.

Links to related posts:
Wheat
Dry milk
Honey
Oil
Dough enhancer
Salt  

© 2019, PrepSchoolDaily.blogspot.com   

23 april 2021

The Importance of Being Able To Alter Recipes

Another skill that will become important down the road is the ability to alter recipes.  Right now, I plan for leftovers.  I love leftovers, whether it's being able to have an easy lunch the next day, or making a double batch of lasagna for dinner so that one can be frozen for use later in the month.  But as the reality hit me a few years back, I realized the electricity may not be around forever, or it may not be reliable enough for safe food refrigeration.  I would need to be able to prepare just enough food for the upcoming meal so that leftovers wouldn't spoil and waste precious food.  I'm really going to miss that someday.

That means I'm going to have to be able to alter most of my family's favorite recipes.  It's something we all go through to some extent as children grow and then strike out on their own. When the children were younger and our family was growing, it was easy to simply double a recipe to feed everyone.  But scaling down has different challenges.  How to you go from one egg to one half?  Or what if you have to reduce a recipe to make one or two loaves instead of three?  That's a bit more math than is sometimes easily done in the head.  Well, it was easier when I was younger.

Even if all the ingredients are bulk, reducing the amounts called for can be a challenge.  But when you need to go from one full can to one-half or one-third of a can, that can mean some serious waste.  However, if the canned goods can be replaced with dehydrated or freeze-dried ingredients, the waste is eliminated.

For example:

Instead of doing what I should have been doing one day, I was surfing the web and somehow stumbled upon a recipe for Southwestern Wheat Bread.  I tweaked it a little bit, and it turned out great.  The family all enjoyed the change of pace.  The original-but-adapted-a-little-bit recipe is below.

Southwestern Wheat Bread
1 3/4 cups warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
1/2 cup cornmeal
4 cups whole wheat flour
4 cups white flour
2 tablespoons oil1 tablespoon salt
1 can (4 oz) diced green chilies
1 can (4 oz) chopped olives, drained
1 can (15 oz) corn, drained
1 large onion, chopped
1-2 jalapenos, seeded and chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese, optional


Dissolve yeast in warm water.  Stir in remaining ingredients and knead ten minutes, adding more flour if necessary.  Let rise one hour in a warm location.  Punch down dough, divide into three pieces, and form three loaves.  Place in greased 4x8" loaf pans and let rise again.  Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes, or until done.

Comments:  The only thing I didn't really like is that it makes three loaves.  It's fine when life is all hunky-dorry and the bread can be frozen for later.  We all really like fresh homemade bread around here, and we like a change of pace, but three loaves of most anything but sandwich bread is a little much to go through.  Unfortunately, when refrigeration is limited down the road, opening cans of green chilies, olives, and corn to use only a third of each to make one loaf of bread isn't going to work well, either.

But there is a workaround, and that is dehydrating the vegetables.  Now I already buy dehydrated onions.  They're easy enough to do at home, but the smell is pretty potent and it's so cheap to buy them at the Home Storage Center.  So that leaves the chilies, jalapenos, olives, and corn.  Frozen corn is super easy to dehydrate.  Buy frozen corn, dump on dehydrator tray, return in 8-12 hours, cool, and package for longer term storage.  With olives, just open the can, drain well, spread them on the dehydrator tray, and check them after 5-6 hours.  Green chilies and jalapenos can be done the same way, or you can pick them fresh from the garden and then dehydrate them.  And this way, it's so much easier to measure out just what is needed for making one loaf of bread.

Southwestern Wheat Bread using dehydrated vegetables

3/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon yeast
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons cornmeal
1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/3 cups white flour
2 teaspoons oil1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon dehydrated diced green chilies
1 tablespoon dehydrated chopped olives
3 tablespoons dehydrated corn
2 tablespoons dehydrated onions
1 teaspoon dehydrated chopped jalapenos
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese, optional

Rehydrate the dehydrated vegetables in warm water for 30-45 minutes before beginning to make the bread.  After the vegetables have rehydrated, add the yeast and sugar.  Stir in remaining ingredients and knead ten minutes, adding more flour if necessary.  Let rise one hour in a warm location.  Punch down dough and form into a loaf.  Place in a greased 4x8" loaf pan and let rise again.  Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes, or until done.

Links to related posts:
Quick and Dirty Dehydrating
Home Storage Centers  

For further reading:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-scale-a-recipe-995827
https://www.cookkeepbook.com/how-to-duplicate-scale-recipes
https://mykitchencalculator.com/
https://skillet.lifehacker.com/divide-multiply-or-adapt-any-recipe-in-one-click-with-1730632423

 © 2019, PrepSchoolDaily.blogspot.com 

1.14.23