The Wild Bread Blog
Thoughts on what can be used when we're short of flour.
Read on for a mixture of anthropology, archaeology, a smattering of current affairs and a perhaps a little bit of prepping. The thread running through all these is our daily bread.
The news from the early stages of the war in Ukraine got me thinking about what would happen if we had a flour shortage. Some eighty-five percent of the flour used in Britain is grown and processed here. It's unlikely we'll have no flour but it is conceivable that we'll have less flour.
While rationing of bread didn't happen in Britain until after the Second World War ended, Germans had to get inventive as bread was rationed and sometimes it wasn't available at all. One recipe used was equal measures of silage, chopped grass and sawdust. Doesn't sound very nice does it? Maybe by looking beyond the boundary of the wheat field we can find some more promising options. Let's explore some alternatives to wheaten bread and consider some native wild plants that can be used for breads on their own and which can be used extend what wheat flour is available.
The earliest evidence for bread making comes from what is now Jordan, 14000 years ago, before the advent of farming. This was a flatbread made from wild wheat and barley seeds, mixed with the pulverised rush roots and small wild beans plus some water then baked in fire embers. We have to remember that wheat and barley are grasses. The prehistoric equivalents would have had a much smaller yield than in modern times and would have taken a considerable effort to gather from the wild. Breads made 9000 years ago in Turkey show that by this point some sort of winnowing, grinding and sifting was going on; still no yeast though. Also, breads were still a considerable effort to make. One might conclude that bread was a food for special occasions rather than an everyday food. The evidence points to the making of some sort of porridge or gruel being more commonplace. It's of note that barley beer appeared 7000 years ago in what is now Iran. Elsewhere Neolithic people from around 5000 were brewing. Bread and beer are intertwined. Once fermentation of grains was discovered and made into beer then the use of fermentation to make bread rise followed. This would have been a domestic and very local activity. The continued evidence for flat breads Indicates that regular use of fermentation in bread making took hold very slowly.
Bread became a staple food only once agriculture became established in the Neolithic and specialist occupations began to happen. From this time archaeology shows all sorts of evidence for the ubiquity of bread such as grinding mechanisms and burnt loaves. Evidence indicates that cultivated wheat spread across the Steppe to what is now China and beyond from around 2000BC.
What about breads from elsewhere?
Cherokee bread, Tsu Gah Yah, was and is made using maize flour called Masa Harina and beans. In Cherokee, selu is the word for maize, but Selu is also the name of the First Woman. Selu is said to have given her life that her children would always have maize. When you taste this bread put all thoughts of bread as you expect it to be out of your mind because this is more of a dumpling than a loaf. Although this is traditionally steamed, I've known frying, baking and putting on a griddle to be used instead. It's best eaten with a hearty stew or a chilli.
Socca, a French chickpea (gram) flour flat bread and its Italian cousin Farinata purportedly hark back to the days of the Roman empire. Versions of this bread can be found from Gibraltar to Argentina. The chick pea was a Roman staple food and was much used as a source of flour. Something as simple as this flour and olive oil made into a flat breads which are cooked on a grill over flames has to be worth a try.
Bark breads
Primarily in Scandinavia, birch and pine have been used to make flour and bread. The Sami harvest the inner cambium from pine bark in early summer to eat as a seasonal delight but also to dry over a low fire or by slow baking in a covered pit in the ground then to grind to make flour. Tree ring evidence for this presents as the 'window' of cut away bark and cambium. Excavation of baking pits demonstrates that this practice has been ongoing for 3000 years. Beyond Sápmi bark bread was made as a Scandinavian famine food during wars and when crops failed. Bark flour was mixed with wheat flour to make it go further in these instances. These breads, both Sami and more widely are made with yeast using a rise and knock back method familiar to modern western bakers. Bear in mind that the effort to make bark flour is considerable. A window of outer bark is cut out as a 'window', leaving the cambium beneath intact and allowing new bark to grow over the space. For having a go at home I'd suggest snapping off some of the ridged sections of bark rather than cutting a big square out. Make sure you have permission before hacking away at any tree. Back at home, dry the bark thoroughly in the oven; 170⁰C for 45 mins should do it. It takes a fair bit of grinding up so the more it is broken down before using a grinder the better.
Bread made solely of bark flour is more of a cracker than a bread. As a wheat flour extender it produces a lovely medium density loaf with a great flavour.
We've established that bark flour can be used to extend wheat flour in bread making. Let's take a look at a couple of other extenders which take minimal preparation but can take a bit of effort to gather.
Sedges.
‘Sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses have knees that bend to the ground.’
Not all sedges lend themselves to flour making however the widespread Pendulous Sedge is a good choice. You'll find it in damp woodlands, it's arching triangular stems often bending over the path. To harvest place your collecting contain beneath the seed head and run your finger tips along so the seeds come away; ASMR much. I don't bother winnowing these seeds, instead I whizz them in a coffee bean grinder. The resulting flour can be used for make flat breads, a risen loaf or mixed into any wheat flour bread dough. They're also lovely as part of a crumble topping. If you're making a risen loaf, bear in mind the rise will not be a great as that from a modern flour. The process of rising brings a fermentation to the flour which releases the best of the goodness and a nutty flavour.
Rumex: Docks and Sorrels
Dock and Sorrel seeds of all species can be used. Rumex is part of the same family as buckwheat. By late summer the green leaves of docks and sorrels and the yellow to green flower spikes will have been replaced by tall stems with rust to dark brown crustings of seeds. My preferred method of gathering these is to snap off the whole stalk and put it into a bag to process at home. If you're processing indoors it's worth spreading out an old sheet or you'll be finding the odd seed for weeks. Using a second large bag, paper or fine mesh, place each stem over or inside the bag and use your fingers to strip off the seed heads. As with the sedge, I don't winnow to remove the husks but just grind. A loaf made solely if Rumex seeds is a dense sponge of a bread with limited rise. Adding molasses or honey to the making of a loaf improves this somewhat. The Rumex flour can be mixed with sedge or wheat flour to make a less dense loaf. My efforts at flat breads using this flour have been more like chewy bsicuits.
It's fair to say that breads made with alternatives to wheat are not going to look or taste like bread we are familiar with. However, I hope you've been inspired to get experimental with breadmaking.
Recipes
Cherokee Tsu Gah Yah
185g dried beans, (any medium-sized beans, such as pinto or black beans, are fine)
1800g water
400g Masa Harina
2 teaspoons salt
20 to 25 dried corn husks, soaked in hot water to soften
Cook the beans in a generous sized pan
Bring the beans to a boil, reduce the heat to a low simmer, then cover and cook for about 2 hours, adding water as needed if the water level falls below the top of the beans. When the beans are soft strain and set them to one side, reserve the liquid.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the masa harina and salt.
Add the beans a little at a time, stirring in as you go.
Add 550g of the reserve bean water to the mixing bowl to make a dough.
Shape the dough into balls.
Boil up a big pan of water.
Flatten the dough balls a little into plump ovals and wrap each in a corn husk or two to fully cover. Fix in place with a strip of corn husk or kitchen twine.
Place the bread parcels into the boiling water then simmer for 45 minutes.
The bread is cooked when the corn husk wrapping pulls away cleanly.
Drain off the water and cool a little before eating.
Socca
Mix together equal parts of chickpea flour and water, with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Rest this mixture for a half hour.
Preheat a cast iron frying pan then pour in the mixture. Place the pan on direct heat for seven to ten minutes.
Bark Bread.
Use pine or birch bark.
If you plan to harvest your own bark please be sure you have permission from landowner to do this. See above for harvesting and preparation methods.
Alternatively you can buy bark flour/ powder online.
As bark to harvest for flour is not so easy to acquire the recipe uses wheat flour too.
200g Pine or Birch bark flour
900g Whole wheat flour
5g Salt
400ml Cold water
Preheat oven to as hot as it will go.
Mix all ingredients to make a dough. Add more water or flour as needed.
Roll the dough quite thinnly, prick it with a fork all over the top.
Bake for three minutes on each side then leave to cool.
This bread is crisp once cooled.
Rumex Bread
The flour from Rumex seeds contains no gluten whatsoever so the bread doesn't rise like usual loaves. This recipe is more cake than bread.
Ingredients
400g Dock Seeds ground
2 Tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Baking Soda
4 Eggs
Mix all the ingredients well.
Bake at 190⁰C for forty minutes.
If you want more bready and less spongey bread uas a 2:1 ratio with bread flour.
Pendulous Sedge Bread
Quantities here are to be adjusted depending on the weight of sedge flour you have. A minimum of 500g is advised.
To get the bread to rise your options are to cover your sedge flour in just enough water to dampen it then leave for up to a day to start the fermentation of wild yeasts or to use packet yeast.
Next add enough water to make a dough and a pinch of salt.
Knead for five minutes.
Add a knob of butter or other fat
Knead for a further five minutes.
Shape the dough into a ball an let it rise for a couple of hours.
Shape into a loaf and bake at 200⁰C until there's a crust and tapping the base gives a hollow sound.
Variations to this recipe are to mix sedge flour with another bread flour 2:1. I've experimented with honey which sweetens the bread and enhances the nutty flavour.
Bibliography
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-rationing-in-the-second-world-war
Charles G. Spicknall, et al. “The Diet in Germany and the Occupied Countries during the Second World War.” Public Health Reports (1896-1970), vol. 58, no. 46, 1943, pp. 1669–81. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/4584674. Accessed 26 Aug. 2022.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1801071115
Cherokee cooklore : preparing Cherokee foods
Mary and Goingback Chiltoskey, 2014 reprint ISBN 1616462574
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/a-brief-history-of-socca-frances-chickpea-pancake/
