Self-sufficiency has been a major topic of discussion lately, from AlphaGeek's
emergency preparedness diaries to kfred's
Home Canning for Beginners. Today I'd like to present another basic home skill that many of us Kossacks might never have tackled that can be personally satisfying, economically beneficial, useful in an emergency, and quite tasty: baking your own bread. It's easy, it's fun, it's relatively cheap, it needs little in the way of equipment (a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon will do), and it will impress the heck out of anyone who doesn't think you know what that big square thing next to the refrigerator is for.
And of course, me being a storyteller, there's a story to go with it.
Flash back to April of 1982. I've written before (in one of Carnacki's Happy Story diaries, I think) about the circumstances in which my wife and I met, got married and had our one-night honeymoon. That's the starting point.
When we got married we were in, out, up and down. In love, out of work, up to our knees in kids and down to the last of our money. I quit my job in Montana to go live with her in southeastern Idaho; that weekend, she lost her job. We were on unemployment and food stamps, with three kids, a mortgage, utility bills and nothing much else but determination to make it all work.
So, we got creative. We would make macaroni and cheese more interesting by eating it "barbarian style" with everyone around a single big bowl. We'd ask the kids what color pancakes ought to be, and then make green pancakes with orange applesauce. Caribou County, Idaho produces most of the seed potatoes used by farmers all over the Northwest. Farmers would end up with potatoes that were to big to process as seed potatoes so they'd just give them away. We ate a lot of potatoes.
And, I learned how to bake bread. It was something to do that was creative, fun, relatively easy for a displaced city boy who thought loaves of bread grew on the shelves at Safeway, and something the kids (ages 8, 6 and 4 at the time) could help with. And a cheap way to feed a family. Don't forget that part.
Being relatively lazy and a novice to baking, but not to cooking (I had once been a hospital cook and to this day have trouble making recipes for fewer than a dozen people) I found a recipe for French bread in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook that required only five ingredients and, if you follow the directions, is practically foolproof. So, let's interrupt the story for a moment and present the world's easiest bread recipe.
Omir's French Bread Recipe
7 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon shortening
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup boiling water
3/4 cup cold water
1 tablespoon shortening, olive oil or other oil/fat
1 egg white
1 package or 2 tablespoons dry baker's yeast (Fleischman's, Red Star or similar)
large mixing bowl
wooden spoon
two baking sheets
cornmeal
First, make sure the warm water is just warm to the touch. You don't want it too hot or too cold -- either one will keep your bread from rising. Mix the yeast into the water and let the yeast sit for about 10 minutes while you do the next step.
Now put the shortening in the bowl and pour the boiling water over the shortening to melt it. Then stir the salt and sugar into the mixture to dissolve them, and finally add the cold water to cool it to lukewarm. Once the water has cooled, stir the yeast mixture into the shortening mixture.
Stir two cups of flour into the water mixture to make a smooth paste, then gradually stir four cups of flour into the paste to make a stiff dough. When you've got the consistency right, the dough should no longer stick to the sides of the bowl.
Now take some of the remaining cup of flour and sprinkle it out onto a counter, table or other convenient flat surface. (This is to work some extra flour into the dough and to keep the dough from sticking to the counter.) Turn the dough out onto the counter and knead it for about 10 minutes. As you knead, the dough will turn smooth and elastic. It'll just plain feel good.
Wash the mixing bowl and dry it; not only should you have a clean bowl for this step, it'll make the bowl warm and help with the rising process. Now coat the inside of the mixing bowl with the shortening, olive oil or whatever other fat you like. Turn the dough over once or twice to coat the surface.
Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and set it in a warm place for about 90 minutes while the dough rises. (My wife likes to put a bowl of boiling water in a cold oven with the dough. Just a suggestion.) It should about double in size. When it's doubled roll the dough out of the bowl onto the counter and punch it down to release the trapped gas inside. Let the dough rest for about 10 minutes, then split it into four equal-size balls. Now you have a difficult decision to make. What shape do you want your loaves to be? I like to shape them into Italian-style round loaves, but you might want to shape them into baguette-style longer loaves. Whichever you decide, shape the loaf, then place it seam-side down onto a baking sheet, lightly greased (I usually use PAM for this step) and sprinkled with corn meal. The corn meal is optional, but it helps to keep the loaf from sticking and besides, it's authentic.
Let the loaves rise until they're doubled in size again, about an hour or so. Once they're risen, brush the loaves with a mixture of egg white beaten with 1 teaspoon of water, then use a sharp knife to cut a few gashes into the tops of the loaves, about 3" apart. Bake your bread at 350° F for 20-30 minutes or just until the loaves are nicely browned and sound hollow when tapped. Serve with homemade jelly and butter.
Honestly, this is about as easy as a bread recipe gets. You can embellish it with things like sesame seeds or shredded cheese or herbs, you can experiment by using flavored oils rather than shortening, you can make it fancier but it taates great just as described.
I got to where I was pretty good at making bread, making it two or three times a week. Time went by, things weren't improving on the economic front, but at least we had bread to eat.
Then came the Caribou County Fair. I hadn't been to a county fair in years and years, but my wife's family went every year. Her father was a master crocheter and often won blue ribbons for his bedspreads and tablecloths. We decided to look over the list of entries to see if there was anything we could enter. Vegetables? We didn't have a garden. Artwork? My wife entered a couple of soft-sculpture dolls. Baking? Aha! Off to the kitchen to make some of my now-famous French bread.
"What do you get if you win?" I asked my wife.
"A blue ribbon and a couple of dollars," she said.
"Well, that'd buy us a gallon of milk," I said.
We entered our bread and soft sculptures on a Tuesday, the day before the fair started. Thursday we went to see the fair, but there hadn't been any judging yet.
We went back on Saturday and being the impatient soul that I am, I went straight to the home crafts exhibit.
"Have you been back to see your bread yet?" the woman at the entrance asked me before I ever got to the tent. I didn't know who she was, but she knew me. That wasn't too surprising in the town where my wife had grown up.
I shook my head no. "Go take a look," she said.
To my surprise and delight I found my bread decorated with a blue ribbon, but there was something else. A banner next to the bread stated that I had won the Idaho Wheat Growers' Association prize for the best baked exhibit at the fair, a prize I hadn't even known existed -- and a $50 check to go with it!
I was completely flabbergasted. I had gone from not knowing which end of a dough ball to knead to being the best in the county at baking. I took this as a testment to the ease of the recipe rather than my skill as a baker, or maybe it was practice born of necessity. We retrieved the bread from the exhibit on Monday, and of course by then it was almost a week old and quite stale. But not being ones to let anything go to waste, we took some eggs and milk and syrup and made French toast out of my prize-winner. It wasn't quite like butchering the pig that won Best of Show for a ham dinner, but it was close. And we ate pretty good on the groceries that $50 bought us.
Times have been better for us since then. We now have to worry more about what our next meal is going to consist of than whether we're going to have it. And when I'm in the mood for homemade bread, I have a bread machine. (I told you I was lazy.) But every so often we remember the bread that won us $50 and appreciate the good fortune we have today.