Poverty Food

[bower]

You have some good bread recepies you would like to share?

If you're not an experienced bread maker, you should definitely try the 5 minute loaf recipe. It's so easy, even my Mom has been converted to baking her own bread, and not bothered by her arthritis.
The only thing you need that is special is a loaf sized pot with a lid. I picked up an enamel round roaster pot for $15 and it works as well as a fancy 'dutch oven' or etc.
I put mine on at night and bake it in the morning. Mom puts hers on in the morning and bakes after supper.

Basic recipe:
Combine 3 cups of flour, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp dry yeast.
Stir in 1 1/2 cups of warm water and a drop of light olive oil (optional).
Cover your bowl with a plate and let it stand for 8-12 hours (longer is okay too).
* wash the dough off your wooden mixing spoon right away and you're done.
Scoop out the dough and turn it upsidedown into your baking pot. Let it stand 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400F. Bake with the lid on for 25 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake for 15 minutes more.
*wash the bowl while your bread is baking.
Put the loaf onto a rack to cool before cutting.

The recipe is quite forgiving and does not require exact amounts but do combine the ingredients well. You can use any kind of flour or combinations of flour that you like. For my taste, the best bread runs about 2 cups of unbleached to 1 cup of (generally pricier but delicious) whole grain flour such as whole wheat, spelt, rye. Sometimes I mix in smaller amounts of tasty things like buckwheat flour or oats too. Coarse additions (eg rolled oats, cracked wheat, sunflower seeds) are in addition to the regular amount of flour, probably not exceeding 1/4 cup or so.
The amount of salt is not critical, Mom makes hers with 1/2 tsp and it works fine. I just estimate the amount of yeast and maybe less than 1/2 tsp sometimes - Mom seems to use more and has had her dough actually rise high in the pan, while mine often looks like it did nothing overnight, however you'll feel how bubbly it is when you pick it up. It will be a bit sticky. The olive oil helps a bit with that and leaves less sticking to the mixing bowl.
* key advice for the new bread baker: always wash your bowl and spoon immediately. Dough dries on very hard and becomes a real chore to clean up if you leave it for later. The only way to become a regular baker is to make washing up part of the process/recipe. Otherwise you will exclaim, this is way too much trouble for bread! on the struggle to remove cemented dough from dish.

[bower]

Just out of curiosity, I did a little math to figure out my cost per loaf.
The 113 gram jar of yeast at $5, light olive oil at $7 for 750 ml, works out to 12 cents a loaf for those and you can throw in the pinch of salt for a penny.
With the unbleached white flour gone up to $9 for 5 kilos, a white loaf will cost me 82 cents total.
Last spelt I bought was a whopping $23 for 2.5 kilos, so a loaf with one cup of spelt costs $1.72. More than double the price.
This is one reason I am trialing out grains because if I can grow my own spelt or other whole grain I can make delicious bread for less.
But still, with the price of a loaf of bread around $5, my cost is still less than half of retail by baking my own.
I have no way of reckoning in the energy cost of the hot water and the baking, but if that's a concern then the thing to do is bake 2 or 3 loaves at a time. I don't think household baking is a big energy cost.

[pepperhead212]

Those are some high prices @Bower! Obviously different up there, but last yeast I got was $6.99/16 oz - gone up about 50¢ since. And that WW bread at lidl is only $2.39/5 lbs - only up 10¢, which is surprising. You're lucky to be able to grow the spelt - good luck!

You have some good bread recepies you would like to share?

I've posted a good number of recipes in the Bakery forum above, and you can see almost all of them are rye bread recipes, as that is my favorite. Many, if not most, of my breads, start out with some sort of preferment, to give more of that yeasty flavor - even breads that don't have that in the original recipe, I often start that way. Any questions, feel free to ask!
the-bakery.html

[worth1]

OK people we need to get back on track here.
Bread isn't poverty food unless it's at least 50% sawdust.

[Sue_CT]

But making your own is a way to fill up, since bread is filling, at much lower cost. But yes, veering off a bit.

[brownrexx]

Tonight I made chicken stir fry with veggies and I was thinking about this thread and the cost of a home made meal. The zucchini, carrots and colored peppers were from my garden. The chicken was $3, can of chicken broth $.99, broccoli $.50, celery $.10, onion $.37, soy sauce and spices $.25 and rice $2.29 for a grand total of $7.50.

There are only 2 of us so this made meals for 2 nights for us for a cost per meal for two of $3.75 ($1.88 for each person) which does not sound too bad to me for a healthy meal. This meal would have been even cheaper if I had cooked my rice from scratch but I used a pouch of Ben's rice so it cost a bit more.

The jar on the side is PA Dutch Chow Chow which is a relish made from year end veggies and it is not included in the cost although it also contains home grown green beans and carrots.

Chicken and Veggie Stir Fry by Brownrexx, on Flickr

[pepperhead212]

OK people we need to get back on track here.
Bread isn't poverty food unless it's at least 50% sawdust.

Bread is a classic poverty food, back before they were charging the ripoff prices in supermarkets. Problem is, the old poverty bread was always just white flour, water, yeast, and salt, which isn't very nutritious - it's all what it is eaten with.

I just figured out that a 2 lb loaf of a 100% ww bread, using today's prices of the flour and yeast (I can get yeast even cheaper at BJ's, but I have to buy 2 lbs, which is too much even for me, and nobody around anymore to split it with), some blackstrap, and using water as the liquid costs about $1.08, not counting energy. Adding extra ingredients will up it a little, but not that much, and far less than you would find on something similar in a bakery (if you could find anything similar). And white breads will be far less, even with today's prices of flour. Unless you plan on putting a stick of butter in the bread! The pain de mie was always the most expensive white bread I'd make, due to the butter.

[Sue_CT]

The problem with the request from the OP though was that he needs to to try not to use ovens and heat generating appliances as well due to the Texas heat. As temps cool off bread making might make more sense for him.

[pepperhead212]

Yes, summer is definitely a time I don't bake much bread - once in a while I simply have to have some, so I bake it outside! When my ac is on, the ovens stay off, for sure!

[Danny]

Enchiladas can be cheaply made, adding finely chopped vegetables to the meat and cheese mix inside the tortillas will stretch the food dollar and make them healthier. Best in an oven, but can be made on top of the stove. Enchilada sauce, canned, walmart, red or green mild is $1.48 for 28 ounces. Use the extra sauce for a pork dish or a chicken dish or even a bean dish.

[worth1]

I was just making a historical comment on how people used to mix sawdust in their bread dough because they didn't have enough flour to make a loaf.

[worth1]

A friend of mine makes bread but he is dissatisfied with the way it turns out.
One thing I advised him about is to not use tap water because of the chlorine in the water.
It was killing the yeast.

[bower]

A friend of mine makes bread but he is dissatisfied with the way it turns out.
One thing I advised him about is to not use tap water because of the chlorine in the water.
It was killing the yeast.

Boiling the kettle is supposed to fume that off?

[svalli]

I wonder why nobody has mentioned ramen noodles? You just need to boil water in the kettle and pour it over the noodles. Or if you want it more nutritional, make it in a kettle and add an egg for extra protein. Eggs in bulk are usually low cost and if fresh, can keep much longer than the expiration date.

Cottage cheese is also an inexpensive way to add protein into diet. As a student I used to eat it a lot and one of my lunch choices when working at a summer job was to mix it with grated cucumber and carrots and add a bit of seasoning salt to it. Now when needing an evening snack, I will have some cottage cheese with orange or some other fruit pieces mixed into it.

[worth1]

A friend of mine makes bread but he is dissatisfied with the way it turns out.
One thing I advised him about is to not use tap water because of the chlorine in the water.
It was killing the yeast.

Boiling the kettle is supposed to fume that off?

How does boiling a kettle remove chlorine from water?

[bower]

hmmmm.... "At room temperature, chlorine gas weighs less than air and will naturally evaporate off without boiling. Heating up water to a boil will speed up the chlorine removal process." But they say boiling for 15 minutes will get rid of the chlorine... and that's a good bit more than boiling the kettle. Another ref says also "boiling effectiveness depends on water surface area". But says chlorine will go with the kettle boil, it's chloramine that takes longer to boil off.
https://sciencenotes.org/does-boiling-r ... ate-water/

[Sue_CT]

Always use tap water, never had a problem with bread.

[worth1]

Always use tap water, never had a problem with bread.

Sometimes our water smells like a bottle of bleach.
I don't use it for fermenting or baking with yeast.

[karstopography]

Bread with yeast is supposed to be best with medium hard water.

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/water

https://thebreadguide.com/which-water-s ... ing-bread/

Leaving water out overnight will allow chlorine to dissipate.

[karstopography]

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/map-w ... ted-states

What your regions water might be like on the hardness scale.