The Secret to Baking Delicious Bread Using Only Wheat, Water and Salt

did you know that you can make delicious bread using just wheat salt and water hi I'm Katie and I'm Jonathan and we are the Provident Preppers there's an ancient secret for creating amazing bread using only wheat salt and water survival bread doesn't have to taste like simply surviving in this video we'll introduce you to the ancient art of sourdough or natural yeast where you can create delicious homemade breads using just basic ingredients today we're going to talk about survival bread and the secrets that you need to know to make it taste incredible so that regardless of what happens if you just have wheat water and salt you can make some delicious bread now there's two basic kinds of survival bread I want to talk about the first is a basic pound survival bread if you're in a hurry or you don't have a lot of resources you can cook this on any type of a hot surface you take the fresh sourdough starter which is just ground wheat in water and we'll talk about the secret and what you need to do to create that in a little while a little bit of salt not that you have to have it but it makes it taste a whole lot better and then water add it until it creates a really thin batter and mix it up well and cook it on a hot surface if you add some oil to that it will improve the texture and it helps to reduce the sticking the pan survival bread is just made out of these basic ingredients it's simple to make and it provides a lot of nutrition the sourdough process actually makes the bread easier to digest and the wheat doesn't cause as many problems and that's a really good thing especially if your diet hasn't been full of whole grains in the past your adjustment to whole wheat won't be quite as problematic this is the best survival bread it's been around forever you just take about 3 cups of warm water a tablespoon of sea salt seven to ten cups of wheat flour and two cups of fresh sourdough starter you stir it all together really well and then the dough needs to be really soft if your dough is too thick and heavy it won't raise well and that's when you get the loaves of bread that are like a brick and they're really dense and they're heavy so make sure that your dough is really soft all you have to do is mix this together to form the dough kneading is not required at all you want to cover it and put it in a warm place and 10 to 18 hours later we're going to bake it the longer you let the bread raise the more sour the taste and the more of the gluten is digested so those with gluten intolerance have an easier time eating bread that has been digested for longer I just dumped this out on a floured surface and you can see those gorgeous bubbles that the sourdough start has formed in that dough I separate it into two equal parts and then I kind of coat the dough with some flour because it's really sticky and we want it to be that way and then I just keep rolling it under until I have this beautiful little loaf that's formed you can put it in a bread pan and make it look like a traditional loaf I happen to like the round ones then you place it in a bowl and cover it I prefer to put some of the parchment paper under it because it makes it really easy when I lift this out and put it into the Dutch oven it just makes it easier but that is absolutely not a necessity and then you're gonna let it double it takes about two to three hours to proof the bread you can score the bread on the top just before you proof it or just before you put it into the oven it totally doesn't matter and if you don't make those cuts in it at all it's not a big deal it's just gonna crack in the cracks will go wherever they want then we're gonna bake it at 425 degrees for 45 minutes we baked this bread in a Bear River rocket stove with just sticks which is part of the reason it's a survival bread right but by putting it in those dutch ovens you can see that these loaves just turn out incredibly beautiful so I heat the dutch ovens before I put the dough in there with the lid on and we just took the lids off already so that you could see the bread inside I prefer to cook them in the Dutch oven with a lid on because it makes a beautiful crunchy crust that is just delightful but you can also just cook it in a traditional bread pan and it'll turn out like regular bread now the one of the things that I think is important to note about this artisan bread is that sometimes it will look like it's done and it's not look how golden and gorgeous that loaf looks but it's only gotten up to 162 degrees which means that loaf is not done so it's really best to have a thermometer so that you can understand what the internal temperature really is so that there's no surprises and then take it out of the oven put it on a rack and let it cool for two hours these two loaves the internal temperature had reached 200 but for a prettier crust I should have taken the lids off the Dutch oven because for some reason these two didn't Brown as well as sometimes they do and that's one of the things about natural yeast is that the end product isn't always predictable it doesn't always turn out the same because you're dealing with very much live organisms then that's kind of cool so the secret to this survival bread is in the start some people call it sourdough others call it natural yeast and others wild yeast but it's all a similar concept so let's talk about the sourdough starter basics this is my Stour dough start and it is ready to go it's a life it's full of healthy probiotic bacteria that rapidly grows and multiplies your sourdough start must be fed if it's not fed it will die and it must have oxygen if you put your start in a warm environment that speeds up the growth but a cold environment will slow the growth down and that knowledge can be used to your advantage now sometimes you'll have a naturally occurring alcohol a dark liquid that forms on the top of your start it's also known as hooch it indicates that your start has did its food supply it's a waste product that is formed by the bacteria it's not harmful at all I just choose to pour it off some people choose to stir it back in you get to do whatever you want with it let's talk about the storage containers that you should keep your start in because remember that start needs air to breathe it is a life and it's going to double right it's going to grow once I was going to teach a class and I had taken my starter and put it in the box of supplies that I was going to demonstrate and the car was really nice and warm and so the start grew and grew in the car and I took the box out of the car and put it on the table in the classroom where I was going to be teaching this class and it exploded like literally exploded and there was sourdough start all over the wall I was mortified but it did teach me a really good lesson you have to be careful because there's a lot of pressure in there and it's growing that day I had to start in a glass jar with a canning lid on it now what I do is I take these plastic lids for my canning jars and John drills little holes in the top of it so that it's able to breathe and that has worked really well I've been doing that now for several years and I've had absolutely no problem with that now the best material is glass that mason jar is perfect if you can find some kind of a crock that's made out of glass great a stoneware crock will work really well but remember that starters are acidic and so you want to avoid metals if you store it in a metal container other than stainless steel that's stainless steels okay it will start to take on a metallic taste and you don't want to do that to your starter I'd also avoid plastic for the same reason so how exactly should you store your starter well you can store it on the counter but if you do that you need to feed it every single day this is great if you're cooking every day or every other day but it doesn't need to be babysat and a lot of us are too busy to do that I personally store mine in the refrigerator and I feed it twice a week sometimes I'll be honest it gets fed once a week and it's still alive and happy if you look at the start right there in my fridge that's what it looks like right after I feed it because I put in one cup of water and one cup of flour so that's the level of my freshly fed start and we have plenty of room for it to go ahead and double now you can store it in the freezer for up to a month I have never done this but I definitely would not do it in the mason jar I would put it in some type of a freezer container and you can make starter flakes and store it for several years we'll talk about that in a minute because when we're talking about a survival food storage and survival bread that might be something that you want to do so let's talk about how we feed the starter where I was talking about feeding the starter when I use my start I dump all of it out but there's just a little bit that stays on the bottom of the jar and on the sides it probably equals a total of a quarter of cup that's left in there and that I put in a cup of water and I stir it around and then I add a cup of flour and I stir it really well because I want to aerate it it's important that you do not use chlorinated water this is bacteria we're trying to encourage the bacteria to grow and chlorinated water can kill the bacteria after I fed my start then I put it in the refrigerator in this photo you can see exactly how much is left in my jar before I feed it because I'm gonna use all of that starter that was in the jar and so how do you obtain a start you just ask around you would be amazed how many people will have a sourdough start in the refrigerator so just start asking around a little bit and chances are you'll find somebody who has one and most of them would totally be willing to share if you ever dropped by my house I'm happy to share it with you anytime but if you have to make a start on your own it's really not that big of a deal you want to mix one cup of water with one cup of flour and by the way I always use whole wheat flour in my cooking you can do this with white flour if that's your preference it doesn't make a difference one way or another white flour will produce a lighter fluffier bread I prefer to use more whole wheat and then just a little bit of white flour sometimes to make it a little bit lighter it's important that you leave the jar open to the air because it's the air that contains that wild yeast and the bacterias they're gonna grow in there which is part of the reason why it's so healthy if you're worried about flies or anything getting into there you can cover it lightly with some kind of a mesh cloth or anything that's still going to allow the air to get into the container stir three times each day to aerate it your first feedings should occur at about 48 hours you feed it by adding a half of a cup of flour and a half of a cup of water if you look at the photo on the right I have that rubber band around the bottom so after I fed it I adjust that rubber band so that I can see it when it starts to double because sometimes it's really easy for it to start growing and you can't exactly remember what line it was at so this is a really easy way to adjust it and keep track of it so from today on you're going to remove half of the start and feed it and tell it's bubbly and it doubles and the reason why you're gonna remove half of the start is because otherwise it's gonna take over the entire room right and you're just trying to get that good bubbly start going if you look at the start on the left you can see that it doesn't have any big bubbles in it yet there's a few little ones but it's really not very impressive so I continued to do this at day six we had successfully grown a start out of ground wheat and water that's it and you can see the beautiful bubbles that have started to form and this is what it looks like on day seven it doesn't look quite as healthy as the start that I use all the time that I have had for many many years but it's well on its way and it made some fantastic bread in fact the bread you saw on the very first slide came from this brand new start now I told you I'd talk a little bit about starter flakes because as a prepper in your long term food storage this would be a fantastic thing to have this is a sourdough starter that I had dried back in 2013 and all I did was after I had made bread and I dumped the dough out I just let what was in the bowl dry and then I harvested it that way recently I did it two ways to be able to demonstrate it for you one was just on a plate I just took some fresh healthy start and I smeared it as thinly as I could on a plate and I let it dry for a couple days you can see how it started to crack and then in a lower right-hand corner there you can see how it's truly just flaked and these flakes should be drying if they snap we want it completely dry and then you're going to put it in a glass jar label it and store it I think it would be best if you didn't store for longer than three or four years yes mine was longer than that but we want it to be really active it could still be good in ten years but if we really have a survival situation we want to make sure that we've got something fresh and then we're not going to waste a lot of time having to grow out our new start it's up to you what you want to do this is another way to do it again you've got your fresh healthy start and this one I just smeared it on some parchment paper and allowed it to dry when it comes to rehydrating your starter flakes all you need to do is take a couple tablespoons mix it with a cup of water and then a cup of flour and I mark it always with that little rubber band so that I can make sure I'm monitoring it and watching it grow so this start takes us beyond just survival and enables us to be able to thrive using just very basic food storage ingredients we can make all of these things here but I want to give you a little taste well I wish I could give you a taste you'll have to imagine what it tastes like from the photos that I show you but these are some of the things that we've created in our kitchen basic white sourdough with Parmesan cheese and I actually had some grilled garlic that we put into this bread and when we do this you've got your your bread dough right and you're gonna put the garlic or whatever your basic ingredients are you're gonna mix that in when you first make the bread and then you're gonna let it raise overnight with those ingredients inside this was some delicious natural yeast basic whole-wheat bread with honey and so when we formed the dough this time in addition to the whole wheat flour and the water and the salt we at some powdered milk some honey some oil and I actually added potato flakes to this one one of the things that potato flakes will do is it makes the dough really soft and helps it even more with the leavening so remember that potato flakes potato starch potato water if you've boiled some potatoes anything that has a little bit of potato in it will definitely help with the leavening and soften your bread this is natural yeast whole wheat sandwich bread natural yeast cinnamon oatmeal bread one of the things that I do a lot if there is some leftover cereal like in this case we had leftover oatmeal from the day before I just mix it in with my dough so that I'm not wasting it and it adds beautiful texture and flavor to the final product with this loaf I patted it down a little bit and sprinkled it with coconut sugar and cinnamon mixed and then I kind of rolled it up and formed it into the balls and you can see the veins of cinnamon and sugar in the center and then before we baked it we sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar it turned out just incredible and this is natural yeast cinnamon raisin bread and whenever I do a sweet bread I'm always putting honey or a sweetener in the dough which also helps it not taste as sour when you add that sweetener this one was apricot spice bread and I had some apricot nectar and instead of some of the water in the recipe I used the apricot nectar what a fantastic flavor that's one of the fantastic things about this process it helps me not waste food as I can use these little bits of leftover something to help flavor the bread and create some wonderful variety these are natural yeast pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and with the natural yeast when you're making the muffins the night before you make something we call a sponge and in that sponge I put the flour the sugar the salt a lot of times I will use some kind of a milk product whether it's milk or yogurt or sour cream and then you let that sponge sit overnight in the morning I add the eggs and the oil the spices and the chocolate chips and create the muffins that way these are a favorite in our house sourdough pancakes are a famous breakfast food it's a great way to use up some of your start so to make the pancakes you can just take your start or you can freshen your start the night before and make sure that it's all nice and bubbly and then all you do is you add some eggs and a little bit of sweetener oil and some salt mix it all up I like the batter to be a little bit thinner it makes a poor better and cook them and the wonderful thing about pancakes is they are actually great survival food you can use leftover pancakes to make sandwiches sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar and roll them up the possibilities are endless so in a real survival situation when your resources are limited this doesn't take much time or fuel to cook and you can use very basic ingredients who would have thought natural yeast crepes these are so good to make the natural yeast crepes I take all the ingredients for a regular crepe recipe and I mix in the natural yeast then I put it in the refrigerator for overnight because I don't want to leave those eggs sitting out on my counter overnight I don't know if it would hurt it or not but I just feel better about it being in the fridge and then in the morning the batter is absolutely perfect and you come up with some really good crepes this is another white sourdough variation with rosemary cheese and olives and here's another one that had roasted garlic and bacon cheddar in it and this is Jonathan's favorite it's 100% whole wheat and when I mix up the dough I put a can of jalapenos in it and then when I bake it I cover it with sesame seeds and some smoked paprika and it really is good especially the toast very very tasty it's not hot but the flavor is incredible this one is my favorite with the red peppers the roasted garlic and the Parmesan cheese it's delicious and one last variety is garlic cheddar and sesame seed bread as you can see there are so many things that you can do with a sourdough start or natural yeast that you don't have to just survive you can totally thrive as long as you have some basic ingredients in your survival food storage do you see why you should store wheat in your serve food storage without wheat you can't make any of this if you store flour it has about a five year shelf-life and it takes on the taste of the can even the mylar bags will make the flowers start to taste kind of metallic so really is a better idea to store wheat long term you can store white flowers short term and that's a great idea but don't neglect storing whole wheat just because you don't use it let's learn to use it bottom line knowledge is power if you take the time to master the skill of baking with sourdough you will never regret it enjoy the journey and then if you ever need to make survival bread you will be the envy of all the neighbors imagine the bartering potential that you would have if you have the ability to create this beautiful loaf of bread from wheat water and salt Google the Provident prepper incredible survival and daily bread using only wheat salt and water this post has a lot of really good information about how to start using sourdough in your baking other videos that you might be interested in our best survival crops and survival food supply don't be afraid to experiment and learn how to use the sourdough process to create healthy delicious baked goods for your family if I can do this you can do this and now for the questions of the day what experience do you have using sourdough or natural yeast and what do you have that you can share with others comment below and thanks for being part of the solution [Music]

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 16,754

Rating: 4.9108634 out of 5

Keywords: Food Storage, Sourdough Bread, Natural Yeast, Cooking with Natural Yeast, Cooking with Sourdough, Wild Yeast, Survival Bread, Prepper, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, The Provident Prepper, Basic Food Storage, Wheat, Natural Leavening, Gluten Intolerance, Survival Food Storage, Baking Bread from Scratch

Id: 09OP5cIPA9o

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 11 2019