Preparedness for when

DawnW

boultdj wrote: »

I do my home grown strawberries & apples in a small,cheap one from L*kel*nd, which I then use in my porrage in winter, but that's all I'v done in it,hth.

I have a cheap one as well, which I have had for years. I mainly use it for tomatoes, as we always grow a lot and make a version of 'sundried tomatoes in oil'. A surprising success is courgettes - they dry very well, which is great, as if you grow them you get far too many to use fresh, and they do not freeze well. I love the idea of dried strawberries for porridge. I don't have enough of those, as I only grow a few plants in hanging baskets, but it might be worth my trying with raspberries

[Deleted User]

I have a 9 tray excalibur now, I first had a 5 tray cheapy from the land of Bay and the trays melted on that when I was trying to dry apple pulp for the guinea piggy. The excalibur is much more efficient and dries very well, I'm still using produce I dried last year and it's kept perfectly and is still perfect in its storage jars. It means you never have to waste fruit or veg again as you can process them through the dehydrator if they start to look sad and use them in the fullness of time. Expensive in the first place but well worth the outlay, Lyn xxx.

jk0

I have a couple of spare sliced loaves in my freezer. I forgot to make any bread yesterday, so I defrosted one.

It's fine, except the top half inch of every slice is stale. I know how this happened:

I put ice packs that go in my milk bag on top of them to re-freeze. Of course the temperature of the bread must have gone up there, and allowed it to go stale.

I think I'll have to re-organise the ice pack drill. Take heed folks.

calicocat

I am just not a natural bread maker, and after several attempts am giving up. .....so i'm not even going to put that into my SHTF scenario.....

I have flour, and hopefully water, chapatis made on the chimenea will be fine with me i've decided....i can make those....lol.

[Deleted User]

I make soda bread in a pair of rectangular mess tins on the woodburner. I turn the tins every 10 minutes and it takes about 40 minutes for the bread to be cooked perfectly and crusty brown on the outside. The tins are used to completely enclose the dough and make a mini oven. It's very nice too!!!

mardatha

Or oatcakes!

calicocat

mardatha wrote: »

Or oatcakes!

Yes.....i'm much better at biscuits....in fact not bad at biscuits when I do them. Chapatis and biscuits will be my way forward.

moneyistooshorttomention

T'aint that hard Calico to make bread...:rotfl:. By now....I find a huge proportion of whats available on sale as bread feels much like pap to me...cotton-wool like/phhhh....and can just about tolerate the "specialist" breads.

So that's the choice now for me personally, ie the very odd few Real Bread outlets (and pay more than I can afford) or make my own. Everything else comes over as pretty inedible to me personally.

calicocat

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

T'aint that hard Calico to make bread...:rotfl:. By now....I find a huge proportion of whats available on sale as bread feels much like pap to me...cotton-wool like/phhhh....and can just about tolerate the "specialist" breads.

So that's the choice now for me personally, ie the very odd few Real Bread outlets (and pay more than I can afford) or make my own. Everything else comes over as pretty inedible to me personally.

It's really odd, but as a kid I could make bread and nice bread.

Haven't done it for years.....and have some how lost how to do it. The last batch was a bit of a cross between bread and more 'heavy' loaf/ malt loaf type consistency. They certainly haven't been light loaves for sure.



In fact.....to be fair, they could be classed as weapons of mass destruction....:rotfl:


I'm not that bothered as don't eat loads of bread......chapatis will do.

jk0

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

T'aint that hard Calico to make bread...:rotfl:. By now....I find a huge proportion of whats available on sale as bread feels much like pap to me...cotton-wool like/phhhh....and can just about tolerate the "specialist" breads.

So that's the choice now for me personally, ie the very odd few Real Bread outlets (and pay more than I can afford) or make my own. Everything else comes over as pretty inedible to me personally.

Ditto. I find shop bread very sweet now, as it must have a fair amount of sugar in it. Sugar gives me zits, and even eating shop bread for two days has one starting.

Calico, I can't claim to do the donkey work. I just bung the ingredients in my bread maker, and next day it's done.