I’ve used Mollie Katzen’s tortilla recipe for years to make a quick fried bread that’s cheaper than buying pitas, faster than making them from scratch, and just as good with hummus. Honestly, I think I could eat my own weight in the stuff.
Feed Yourself: Flour
- By : Sarah
- Category : Cooking, Kid Friendly
Cooking
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Part of the idea of us living on this homestead is that we be able to feed ourselves without much money. We aren’t yet to the point where we produce alot of our own food, so we need to learn to eat basics on a budget. Flour has proven to be a cheap ingredient that we can make a wide variety of healthy meals with. Most of these meals are bread based, with numerous add-ins from vegetables to chocolate. You just have to know what you have and what it can do for your bread.
Download recipe cards for Basic and Cheeseburger Bread Blobs:
[easy_media_download url="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1N-X6XbaZ66a_CUVoIobAvdXm4y-GBPK6" text="Free Download"]I just want to be sure that I add in that we don’t have an oven. All of these “breads” are cooked on a wood stove in the winter and an open flame rocket stove in the summer. This is easy stuff here.
Bread can be as simple as flour and water. This is not amazing bread that you cook for a dinner party, but if you are hungry, it is food. Whisk up the flour and water to the consistency you want. Scoop spoonfuls onto a hot, greased pan, flip when edges are dull. Just a few more minutes to cook the other side and then you have bread.
Nothing special, kind of pancake or crepe like. You can put butter and maple syrup on it or some fruits and whip cream. Meat and gravy would go nicely with this “bread”. Basically, you make this when you are out of other bread ingredients, or want really quick bread-like something to eat.
By adding just a couple more ingredients, we can make this bread really good. Baking soda to make it rise; eggs give some structure, help it rise, and add flavor; salt; and fat (oil, butter, etc) make the bread flaky and add flavor.
Bread tends to be a favorite in this household, buying bread is expensive (against the point of homesteading) and we don’t have an oven. We used to make pancakes all the time to solve this problem. Then the pancake recipe started to evolve into amazing breads as we experimented with different ingredients.
Since this “bread” was something we just started throwing together, there isn’t really a recipe we follow which makes it easier to throw in the ingredients you have, just by knowing what you can get out of them. Then one day we made pepperoni bread on the stovetop. Amazing, of course. I wonder what other good stuff we could put into bread for a quick, easy meal? ANYTHING!
Hamburger, mushrooms, cheese, bacon, broccoli, apples, cinnamon, raisins, chocolate, beans, potatoes, hungry yet?
(Note: Our healthy diet it not low fat or low calorie. Our healthy diet is more about no corn syrup or other processed foods.)
Here is a rough recipe for the basic stovetop “Bread Blobs” that we use. I will post a few more delicious ideas, but this will get you going.
5 eggs
2 1/2 c flour
2 T oil
1 tsp salt
5 tsp baking powder
Water as needed to get it to be thick batter
Step 1: Preheat a cast iron pan on your wood stove with your choice of cooking oil.
Step 2: Whisk up eggs and oil in a medium bowl.
Step 3: Add flour, a little at a time, mixing as you go. Add water as needed until batter is smooth and thick. Add everything else, except baking powder, and mix well.
Step 4: Add baking powder, trying to spread it out so it isn’t clumpy. Mix it in well, then watch it rise.
Step 5: Scoop spoonfuls of batter onto the hot pan. If your batter is really thick, spread the spoonfuls a little so your blobs are smooth on top.
Step 6: Once the edges of your blobs start to dull, you can flip the bread. If it is thick, cook it longer. They usually only burn when the stove is really hot. After a few more minutes, scoop them off the stove and serve.
We have discovered a bunch of ways to make this “recipe” really good. It really helps to get in a variety of cheap, easy meals when you can stuff anything into bread. And it helps get picky kids to eat.
For more info about making bread, check the links below. Stay tuned for more stovetop Bread Blob recipe ideas!
