How to make bread without bread flour

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Now You Know how to make bread without any bread flour!

I got through January spending less than £30 on groceries for the household but ran out of bread and bread flour. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, so let's get inventive.

 

Running out of bread and bread flour is normally unheard of in this household but it can happen to the best of us, especially when trying to empty cupboards and stick to a grocery challenge budget of £1 per person per day, so I spent less than half my allocated budget just cooking from what is already here.
As long as you have ordinary flour, eggs and milk then you can make pancakes.
If you have just the flour and milk, you can make flour tortillas.
Better still, as long as you have yeast and good old-fashioned, all purpose, plain flour then you can make your own budget bread.

BARGAIN ALERT

Brown Bread and Roll Mix only £1 for 3.5kg*

Here's how to make bread without bread flour

• 1 1/2 cups warm water (approx.)
• 2 tsp dried yeast
• 1 tsp of salt
• 2 tsp oil
• 4 cups plain flour

I added a scoop of wheatgerm to mine, so it needed another spoonful of water, then made the loaf in my breadmaker. You do not need a breadmaking machine, this recipe will work equally well by hand in the usual way - knead the dough well for 5 minutes, rest/prove for an hour, knead for another 5 minutes, rest/prove for another hour, then shape and bake as normal, either in a lightly greased loaf tin or on a tray.

 

I was quite sceptical about whether or not this loaf would rise, as I have never learned the actual differences between each of the various flour types other than the obvious differences between grain types like wheat and corn but as you can see, the loaf rose as it normally would had I been using proper bread flour.

 

The load was baked as normal white bread on the 1.5lb setting and this did it perfectly. The loaf turned out the tin without a problem and sounded hollow when tapped on the bottom. It got wrapped in a clean, cotton tea towel until it cooled enough to slice. Don't get me wrong, this isn't the first time I have baked bread with plain flour, as I do tend to dilute bread flour with plain flour to save money when handbaking or if the bread mixes aren't available on offer, but this was the first time I had tried baking a full loaf in the breadmaker without having any strong bread flour in the recipe.

 

Once cooled, the load sliced as any other bread would slice - so we had to sample it with some homemade blackcurrant and bramble jam. It tasted delicious!

From now on, I will not be paying extra for strong bread flour - I'll sit back and wait for the bargains to appear and, in the meantime, keep a better stock of cheap, all purpose plain flour, which currently costs 45p per 1.5kg bag from most big supermarkets. I have, however, managed to order 3 x 3.5kg of cheap bread and roll mix from Approved Food to replenish stock and I'll add on an extra couple of bags of plain flour next time I get the chance of it. I'm guessing that I'll can dilute the bread mix in similar fashion as long as I add an extra sprinkle of dried yeast.

You can add herbs, spices, garlic, sultanas, seeds, grains, nuts or whatever else takes your fancy - play about with it to find what you like best and don't forget to share your results and photos with fellow followers of frugal living in Frugaldom's forums.

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Frugal Living Adventures

An update on progress at Frugaldom

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What is frugal living? This is a question I am still being asked, as it still comes as something new to many. It is NOT self-imposed poverty or about trying to live like Tom and Barbara in 'The Good Life'. It's about balancing your life with your income in a safe and sustainable way. This is where my frugal living adventure has taken me so far...

Our online challenges run from 1st January through to 31st December every year. The first one began in 1999 but it wasn't until 2007 that the decision was made to take the main project fully online. We have the frugal blog, frugal shop, frugal forums, frugal entrepreneurs, our own chat room and now, to celebrate each and every one of these successes, we have our Frugaldom project and we have introduced frugal breaks to enable those on low incomes or with tight budgets the opportunity to get away from it all and have an affordable holiday.

That takes care of what I have been up t for the past 16 years but we are now nearing the end of our various 2015 money saving, money making and frugal living challenges and preparing to start all over again. If you would like to join us, please follow the link to the forums and register a free username then spend some time browsing. In the meantime, I am going to bring myself up to date with where I am at with the writing and blogging as that is, after all, why I set out to stretch the pennies in the first place. Writing doesn't often net you much of an income so frugal living allows for life on a tight budget while saving for all the other things you want out of life.

Out of interest, I attempted to bake a 25p loaf to find out if it is still possible to do so. The answer to this is yes - if you use nothing more than 375g of cheap bread flour, a teaspoon of the cheapest dried yeast and a pinch of salt. There's no oils, butters, milk or other additives in these loaves, they are basically flour and water with the raising agent added. Tastes OK to me!

My favourite handmade and homemade item of all time has to be my woolly blanket. I knitted two for this household and then knitted one for my youngest grand daughter, who received it as a Christmas gift last year. The blankets get knitted in strips, using up all the odd balls of wool you can find. Each strip gets knitted to the required length, depending on the intended use for the blanket, then the rows get sewn together to create the finished blanket. While doing last year's, I was able to take a little time an show eldest grand daughter how to knit. She now wants a blanket of her own, so I will eagerly encourage her to knit it herself. I love my knitted blanket! It has more than served its purpose, having been relocated to the caravan. But now I need another one for using at the house!

Everyone who knows me knows that I love filled doughnuts - usually jam, apple or custard. It became a bit of a standing joke a very long time ago, when one particular friend would seldom arrive without making a trip via what was then known as Dunkin' Doughnuts but then supermarkets began selling in earnest - mass produced doughnuts! It's a sad fact that we can now buy these for about 12p but for frugal lifers such as me - it is a very affordable luxury and one that's even better served up as a gift. So... I made it my rule quite some time ago that business meetings had to include doughnuts, preferably supplied by whoever is visiting me to talk business. That's how I discovered chocolate custard doughnuts! I hadn't even heard of them until last month! Thank you Mr L, who took the time to call me and rhyme off the supermarket selection from which to make my choice! Much appreciated!

Some people have fallen out with me over the past year owing to my decision to spend my own hard-earned cash in a local supermarket. I'm afraid to say that I don't care - if it costs less to buy the product than it does for me to make it, then it's a luxury best delivered by a local driver whose income depends on these very supermarkets. Without them and their ridiculously cheap basic foodstuffs, we of the frugal living ilk would seldom afford ourselves such indulgences.

November saw the final completion of the yard fencing. We still don't have a full bathroom or a cooker in the kitchen but we do have two paddocks or corrals and the barn yard fully fenced! My grand daughters absolutely love going out to Frugaldom for the day. We can pack a picnic, wrap up warm and they take great pleasure in investigating the latest developments. Now that the barn has been sectioned into several workable indoor stalls, the youngest is convinced that she can fill them all with little ponies! But she is equally excited by the prospect of planting trees, growing food, painting, crafting and organising yard sales at the Trading Post, which is what we call our bartering barn and its newly enclosed space.

The first snow of the year arrived but it didn't lie at Frugaldom. We have had wind, rain, hail, sleet and snow plus about four different storms that bring flood alerts to the area but only the hills have the snow lying - so far. If the trees are anything to go by, I would hazard a guess at a mild winter but we have already had several good frosts and freezing temperatures.

I don't often share family photos, almost never if truth be told, but this has to be one of my favourites. The girls had lifted the ice off the top of one of the water butts at the barn and were using it as a round window - holding it together to see if it would mend after it broke in two. It didn't mend but it did stay frozen for the next two days after this photo was taken.

Being on a caravan holiday park for part of the time means getting to know all the neighbours and those neighbours now know that leftovers needn't be binned - we can use anything and everything to save it from being wasted. This was the remains of an out of date bag of wholemeal flour that got made into a loaf for feeding to the birds. Having the oven on in the caravan means not needing the gas fire lit, so baking is an ideal way of killing two birds with one stone during cold weather - pardon the cruel pun! The girls like watching for the more unusual birds that they don't see in the garden at home, so they are easily tempted to sneak out to the bird table with leftovers whenever they are staying the weekend.

This is one of the Jays that has started frequenting the bird table since putting out the homemade bread. They are normally really shy birds that can be heard more often than seen, so it's great seeing them land so close. The woodpecker hasn't taken too kindly to having such noisy visitors, but there's always food enough for them all at the feeding station.

And now, to bring your right up to date with how things are going here, I have the fire lit, the solar fairly lights have been charging in the window in preparation for decorating the big Christmas tree at Frugaldom and the house is feeling quite toasty, despite the howling winds and sooty flecks wafting around the living room after a huge back draught sent a cloud of smoke down the chimney when someone opened the back door while I was kindling the fire.

With winter on its way and all the trees from the new trees planted, I can now rummage through my wool stash and get to work on the next multi-coloured, knitted blanket. I looked out my big size 7.5 needles, cast on 40 stitches and have already begun knitting the rows that will create the first strip of blanket. They call it 'stocking stitch' but to me it s nothing more than plain knitting with zero complications. Sat in my chair by the fireside with the cat sprawled asleep by the hearth is actually rather festive, so I will probably start thinking about retrieving the tree from the cupboard at the top of the stairs and get that decorated next weekend. Hopefully, I'll also hear back from John the apple man, letting me know when the Galloway Pippin apple trees will be delivered for planting.

For 2016, I plan to progress as usual with my various projects and challenges but have decided that the time has come to cut back on the hours spent working at earning a 'decent' living and more time spent working at making the most of what life has to offer - the wealth of friends, family, health and happiness. I'm also planning on getting back to regular blogging.

Posted by NYK Media as part of the Frugal Blog

Scottish Multimedia | I Am Too Easily Distracted

Scottish Multimedia | I Am Too Easily Distracted

Have you ever wondered what it must be like to be so single-minded and focussed on your goals that you actually achieve them all, one by one, consistently?

I sometimes feel like one person attempting to kick two dozen footballs through a marshy field of tacklers while trying to get all those tiny balls into that one big net at the same time in the crazy belief that this will somehow clear the field and make it grow into a beautifully productive park land with a profusion of ripe-for-the-picking, succulent fruits and vegetables.

Oh what a world that would be!

Back to reality!

Continued

Some DaysThings Just All Go Wrong!

Egg-ceptionally Busy March!

Some days, no matter how hard you try to do a good job, things just go wrong, anyway. I've had a few of those days recently, so I'm just going to resort to making it to the end of March without too many calamities and not counting my proverbial chickens before the eggs hatch.

Speaking of eggs, we now have two ducks a hen and two bantams laying, so I have begun swaps and trades with neighbours again - a lovely lemon drizzle cake handed in this afternoon!
 

Apologies for the lack of posts over the weekend but I'm squeezing in 14+ hours a day in an attempt to fit in work, household, family crises and the complete overhaul of the web site, along with building us some brand new forums - Now You Know. They aren't quite completed yet, but they are open for use, so grab your username before someone else does and I'll 'see' you in the daily chat thread.

Pancakes galore!

With all the eggs we are now getting, it has been a case of quickly using these to make speedy meals grabbed in between hours of hectic work. (I'm not even thinking about the 2013/14 tax return yet!) So, it's been eggs for lunch in some way, shape or form. Pancakes made with sultanas and cinnamon, served with sugar and lemon... again!

Good grief! What is it?

In a huge rush to make a loaf, this is what I got in return! The above is supposed to be a beautiful, freshly baked loaf that would be ready for breakfast after I got up early and decided to try the fastbake setting! I'm guessing that's a no-no for the cheap bread mix I got a few weeks ago. But gear not! This mangled mass got chopped and turned into croutons after we salvaged the middle slices. The crunchier bits got chopped and added into the chickens' breakfast!

Doughball!

 

 My next calamity came when I put the day's mince on to warm and forgot to make the dumplings! I did a quick search and saw mention of a speedy microwave version... it didn't work very well! I think I 'rubberised' them! Well! I was so annoyed that I dropped them into the mince and let them soak themselves soggy in extra gravy... then served them up with cabbage and carrots for dinner anyway! There were 6 but I am ashamed to say that the two leftover were simply inedible and went into the fire to burn for a couple of hours!

Lunchtime today was toasted pitta breads filled with scrambled eggs and hot dog sausages, 'garnished' with tomato ketchup! But guess what? I over crisped the pittas!

Pasta twirls added to mince & carrots

The leftover mince from the doughball disaster should have been made into a pie but I ran out of time again... phone rang at 7.45pm and that reminded me to look at the time and realise I hadn't made dinner! So tonight's gourmet choice was pasta mixed through the leftover mince and carrots.

Seeking solace after all my culinary woes, I did a cupboard rummage and discovered a tiny tin of longlife sterilised double cream, which gave me the incentive to whip up some ice cream from one of the cheap instant mixes. I needed some frugal luxury, so that's what I made... extreme luxury ice cream!

Whipped double cream, milk and cocoa

 The ice cream mix needs half a pint of milk, so I made it up with skimmed UHT and then whisked in a heaped tablespoon of cocoa powder.

Microwave-defrosted a bowl of garden raspberries

 I still have plenty of berries in the freezer, all picked last summer from the garden, so I quickly defrosted a bowlful, sweetened them and then mashed them.

Adding sweetened, stewed raspberries to the chocolate mix

 Adding the mashed raspberries to the chocolate ice cream mix - had to sample the rasps to cheer myself up a bit - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Mixed and ready for freezing

All mixed and ready for the freezer. That was almost 9pm and it's now almost half past midnight, but guess what I am doing, other than finishing off a very rushed blog post? I'm about to tuck into this absolutely amazing ice cream and don't care what anyone things about that! :)

Raspberry and chocolate ice cream

Apologies for any silly mistakes in this post; I am hitting 'post' without previewing or proofreading it... my ice cream is melting!

Day 5 of Making it in March - Hot Dogs and How to Make a #Frugal Bean Sprouter #MIIM

Day 5 of 31 - Spuds, Tin Cans, Sprouters and Hot Dogs!

Lemon & mango drizzle cake

Here goes for day 5 of my 'Making it in March' challenge.

The day began early, as I didn't want to miss the coalman when he was driving along the lane. The coal bunker was almost empty, so best filling it up in the hope that it does us through to spring. 5 x 50kg bags costs £70 and we get through about 10kg each day the fire is lit. Price wise, there isn't much difference between coal and logs, except the coal, in this house, also heats 5 radiators and the water, not just one room.

I made the most of the extra 'morning time' and baked the remaining cookie dough (mango, apricot, fig, pistachio & almond) then baked a lemon drizzle cake, but added in some of the mango pulp to try and use that up, too.

POTATOES

Seed potatoes 'chitting' in egg cartons

The above are my 2014 indulgence of the year, so far - heritage seed potatoes! On the left are the Shetland Blacks that arrived a couple of weeks ago and on the right are my Salad Blues, which arrived a couple of days ago. They are sitting in cardboard egg boxes to allow them to 'chit'. ('Chitting' is the gardeners' term for letting them start to sprout.) The Shetland Black is a dark-skinned potato with white flesh that carries a blue/purple ring around it. The Salad Blue, which isn't really a salad potato, is my favourite of all time, both for growing and eating. These stay deep purple throughout cooking, so you can get some very colourful and interesting mash!

 

The potato peelings I kept

Last month, during my 'Extremely Frugal February' challenge, we had a fabulous time stretching the pennies as far as they would go. It was a month of finding out just how extreme we could be in our quest for moneysaving and zero waste, so even the potato peelings were being saved. (Link to post)

Planting the sprouted potato skin

My potato peelings are normally treated as organic waste and added to the compost, fed to the garden poultry (potato peelings need to be cooked first), added to the wormery or used to bank the fire at night. But I wanted to show you that from one potato can come many, so I picked out the best sprouted piece of peel and it has now been planted into a tub on the patio. With care and luck, this piece of peel that would otherwise have been discarded has the potential to produce over 1kg of potatoes.

TIN CAN PLANTERS

Making tin can planters safe

I do love my tin cans - I'm collecting them all for a specific summer project but keep dipping into them for other things! Before you make anything from them, make sure all the sharp edges have been flattened.

Don't forget to add drainage holes in the bottom of the tins

I managed to fit a dozen tin cans onto an old baking tray. I'm using a piece of non-slip rubber mesh underneath so there's no water-logging.

Ready for planting

Remember the damp pea and bean seeds that I washed and soaked to try and save them? I have now filled each of these tins with compost and vermiculite and added a row each of the runner beans, dwarf beans and peas. We'll soon know if they are still 'alive'.

 

 

Wrapped wallpaper around them to prevent spills

After wrapping some old wallpaper around all the tins, I sat the tray on the windowsill and have topped it with the glass out of the broken picture frame. (You know the one - I used part of it to make the apex roof for the cat's den yesterday.)

SPROUTING BEANS INTO BEAN SPROUTS

Mung Beans

Frugal living means making the most of anything we can make or grow for ourselves. Mung beans are great for sprouting and adding into salads and stir fries and let's face it - frugalers love their home grown salads and their 'leftovers' stir fries. But how do we sprout mung beans without a fancy, extravagant sprouter?

 

Homemade frugal sprouter

Get a clean jar with a screw cap metal lid, a hammer and an awl. You don't even need the hammer, as most jar lids are now thin enough to pierce with minimal force. Now punch a whole load of holes in the lid - do this on top of thick card or a folded towel to avoid scoring or puncturing floors or worktops. Now give everything a final rinse.

Hey presto! A homemade sprouter

Place a couple of handfuls of mung beans in the jar and rinse them several times with water. Take the lid off to add the water, screw it back on again to drain the water back out of the jar.

 

Easy drainer

I'm leaving my mung beans to soak for 24 hours before giving them a final rinse. I'll follow up this post with progress as and when I see anything happening in the jar, which is now on a shelf in my kitchen.

HOT DOGS IN HOT DOGS

99p bread mix and cheap hot dogs

Now before anyone starts commenting about the unhealthy aspects of this snack, hold your typing fingers still and let me explain - this was an inexpensive and fun experiment and if we were having it as a proper meal, I would normally serve this with onions, cheese and tomato and/or plenty of salad stuff. Today, however, lunch was just a hot dog with tomato ketchup. Cost = less than 5p per person! Worth a shilling for the novelty factor alone!



Knead and prove your dough

Bit of cheating going on here as I am using the 99p per 3.5kg bread roll mix I got from Approved Food*, so it's a simple case of 'just add water', mix, knead, rest, knead, rest, split into finger roll size, wrap around a cheap hot dog, leave to prove for 20 minutes then bake for about 20 minutes.

- PHOTOS DELETED -

I did take a full set of progress photos but to be perfectly blunt, I fear some may have found them obscene! So here is the finished article.

Use smaller pieces of dough for legs and ears

Bake the rolls with the hot dogs inside them - I used the cheap tinned hot dogs, I think they were 5 tins for £1 from Approved Food when I bought them!

Hot dog rolls

I made only two 'hot dogs in hot dogs', one for each of us here in Frugaldom. I got some very curious looks when I presented 'the dog' on a plate at lunchtime today, that's for sure! We'll need to eat the other rolls tomorrow lunchtime to use up the rest of the hotdogs, too!

 

Now I am retiring to bed with a cup of tea and planning out my next phase of rag rugging!

NYK, Frugaldom

References and acknowledgements
http://www.goodshomedesign.com/hot-dog-dog/

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Day 28 of Extremely Frugal February - Pizzas and Cannelloni

It's the Final Day of February! We Got Triple Nominated!

First of all, some exciting news! Our frugal blog has received three nominations into the 'MAD Awards this year - isn't that great? If you would like to nominate, the web address for this blog is http://frugaldom.blogspot.co.uk and you can vote for us either via the badge on the right hand side of this page or else by going to http://www.the-mads.com/ and nominating from there. We have been nominated into categories for BEST THRIFTY BLOG as well as BLOG OF THE YEAR and MOST INNOVATIVE BLOG, but I'm not quite sure how that happened. :)

Now look away if you are easily offended by weird food concoctions and past BBE dates!

Cheap bread and roll mix - 99p for 3.5kg

Last night was a late one - we met up with neighbours and went walking in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis after seeing the alerts for sufficient solar activity to bring it this far south. We stayed out until about 1am and saw nothing. I was so disappointed, having convinced myself that we would catch a tiny glimmer. It just didn't reach our corner of Scotland, despite being reported as far south as Essex. I did spot four meteors/shooting stars streaking overhead, though, and the sky was amazing with the millions of stars on display.

By way of compensation, my Approved Food* order arrived today, all £15.01 of it! 400 bread rolls' worth of mix for £3.96, so that's less than a penny per roll and enough to see us to the end of the year. Bit disappointed in the quality of the potatoes but I have my seed potatoes at the ready to start chitting (sprouting prior to planting) them soon. With luck, we'll be eating home grown by summer.

Now for some really extreme frugaling!

 

When opening the orders, they are always strapped with the nylon braided tapes. I have used these in the past to make streamers to hang in the garden as bird scarers but I thought I would try a bit of weaving. Seems to work, so I won't be throwing any more in the bin - I'm sure there are plenty of other things that can be made from them.

 

I used up the remaining 4 mini-naan breads from the open pack with another tin of tomatoes, herbs, pepper and a single portion of cheese for each of us - I had my usual pickle with mine.

Last night's chilli con-coction was too much for two people and H doesn't really like chilli, so I can't serve it 2 nights in a row. I went rummaging again and came up with a plan - but now the leftover chilli and rice has turned into another 6 meals! Look away now if you don't like to see the 'before' version of frugal meals...

Mixing the rice and chilli concoction with sage & onion stuffing

I mixed a cheap pack of stuffing with last night's leftover chilli and added the rice into this, as well.  I haven't a clue how this is going to turn out but I do have a vague idea of how I expect it to taste.

Filling the Cannelloni tubes with the mix 

I've less than half a box of the cannelloni tubes left but after filling the 11 of them, I still have some of the chilli mix left to use - I spy cabbage!

Filling in the gaps to use excess mix

 I peeled off a large cabbage leaf, split it and wrapped this around the remainder of the chilli concoction mix - haven't made stuffed cabbage in a while! The last scoop of mix got packed into the corner of my dish.

Frugal version of cannelloni - Frugalloni

I poured the jar of tomato and herb sauce over the filled pasta tubes and used half of the 25p tin of cheese chopped over the top. The other half has been wrapped in tin foil and put in the fridge for later use. This is my largest lasagne baking dish, which usually provides enough for 6. Everything was crossed in the hope this tasted OK.

Looks OK to me! Tasted lovely!

Baked the dish in the mini oven for about an hour and then gave it a quick blast under the grill to bubble the cheese. It tastes excellent to me, even H was quite impressed with it! We followed our Frugalloni meal with a bowl of 10p strawberry instant whip - not the healthiest option, but there has to be some vitamin and calcium content in milk dessert, hasn't there?

This living on £4,000 for the year is still fun! I have been doing this for years and, as all the debts slowly disappeared and savings began to build, I stuck with it to enable me to build up more savings. This year is no different and it's certainly no easier, what with the price of electricity, coal and fresh produce forever increasing in price. Hopefully there will be a point at which the garden has been sufficiently reclaimed and redeveloped to provide all the fruit and vegetables needed by the household but, until then, most foodstuff needs to be bought. Spending during February has been kept to an absolute minimum, although there were still a few pounds spent on non-essentials.

My £4,000 is for absolutely everything relating to the household except Council Tax, as I have no control over the price of that - it is compulsory and costs just shy of £1,000 for the year. We don't pay the waste water part, as there's no drainage system where we live, but we do have mains water here, so that chare is included in your Council Tax if you live in Scotland. Extremely frugal February has seen the following spends:

Groceries: £36.39
Electricity: NIL - I topped the pre-payment meter right up to last us all winter
Coal: £70 for 5 bags
Other: £6.32 + £7.52 in vouchers for coffee filters, firelighters and some thermal mugs.
Telephone & Internet: £15.79 (line rental paid in advance for 12 months)
Deliveries: £10.50
House Insurance: £145.78 (buildings & contents for 12 months)
Donations: £5.00 to a very brave friend who is doing a charity abseil down the Forth Bridge in May. (See here for details)

Total cash spends for February £289.78

Monthly average budget is £333.33, so I am about 13% under this month, despite a couple of big spends. I haven't ventured further than neighbours' houses other than our late-night walking expedition in search of the Northern Lights.

Tomorrow is day 1 of 'Making it in March'. It's about making absolutely anything except debt - food, gardens, clothes, gifts, recycled goods, savings, money, changes, amends... almost anything goes, you decide! You can join us free in this forum (registration is free). Before anything else, I still need to sew my blanket together!

NYK, Frugaldom

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