Bread In/For Hard Times

Bread In/For Hard Times: I was in a conversation with a friend the other day and he got to talking about using the wheat he had stored during (really) hard times. He was concerned about the fact that the baking of bread was going to require that he develop his/his wife’s baking skills in their large Dutch oven and perhaps even acquire a solar oven. He was also concerned that in a longer term difficulty, they might run out of yeast, oil or even salt – and then what?

The answer came to me driving home the next night after work: chapati.

I remembered a conversation I’d had a few months earlier with an Indian-born co-worker concerning the bread she was using at her meal.  She called it a chapati, it was round and flat and she said that it was a traditional bread in her family (and over a lot of India) and that it was simple and tasty requiring little preparation. She gave me the recipe then and there on a small piece of paper: whole wheat flour and water, with a little salt and oil being optional. You could cook it on a griddle or really any flat cookware such as a cast iron skillet.

Ideal!

Here’s the recipe she gave me in a more formal format from asianonlinerecipes.com

Chapatis Recipe:

Ingredients: 3 cups Fine wholemeal (wheat/PH) flour or roti flour

1 ½ teaspoon Salt or to taste

1 tablespoon  Ghee or oil, optional

1 cup Lukewarm water

Method:

• Put flour in mixing bowl, reserving about half cup for rolling chapattis.
• Mix salt through the flour in the bowl, then rub in ghee or oil, if used.
• Add water all at once and mix to a firm but not stiff dough.
• Knead dough for at least 10 minutes (the more it is kneaded, the lighter the bread will be.
• Form dough into a ball, cover with clear plastic wrap and stand for 1 hour or longer (if left overnight, the chapattis will be very light and tender).
• Shape dough into a balls about the size of a large walnut.
• Roll out each one on a lightly floured board (using reserved flour) to a circular shape (about six or seven inches in diameter per other sources/PH) to a circular shape as thin as a crepe.
• After rolling out chapattis, heat a griddle plate or heavy-based frying pan until very hot, and cook the chapattis, starting with those that were rolled first.
• Put chapati on griddle and leave for about 1 minute.
• Turn and cook other side a further minute, pressing lightly around the edges of the chapati with a tea towel or egg slice.
• This encourages bubble to form and make the chapattis light.
• As each one is cooked, wrap in a clean tea towel until all are ready.
• Serve immediately with butter, dry curries or vegetable dishes.

Here’s a bread for hard and really hard times that requires: no baking (and therefore no oven), no yeast, no oil (though optional), no salt (though optional), very little water, and very little hands-on time.

It’s a bread that is very nutritious, can be cooked fresh with each meal, may be stuffed or  used as a roll-up with almost any other available food, used as a flat bread, or folded over on one end used as a spoon/scoop for liquids or soup/stew-like foods. There’s almost no waste.

Until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.