No Egg, No Milk, No Butter Chocolate Cake

This is another wartime recipe that would have been baked to add cheer to a family meal using the very basic of ingredients. 

I've substituted vegetable oil for the recipe's original recommendation for Oleo. Oleo required fewer ration points than butter, so was often the preferred solid fat for families. Oleo was a white solid fat, like Crisco, that came with a small capsule of yellow coloring that would be kneaded into the white fat to make it resemble butter. A little while ago, an elderly friend of mine from church recounted her impressions of Oleo. 

"Oleo was ghastly. It was supposed to taste like butter. But for a girl who spent her early summers on grandpa's farm, I knew butter. And this was not anything like creamy, sweet butter. It was greasy and tasteless. It was my job to mix in the yellow color. I was 8 at the time and this job was often relegated to children. I hated the feel of the Oleo on my hands. Yes! I mixed it with my bare hands."

In my rendition of the cake, with using oil instead of margarine (Oleo), the mixing process is also simplified, as I don't need to use a mixer. 

Sugar was rationed during WWII, limiting each household member to 1/2 pound, which is about 1 measuring cup. Cake recipes that might have previously suggested more sugar were adjusted to spare as much of the family's sugar ration as possible.

Many kitchens found themselves lacking an ingredient or two at any given time, so just made do with substitutions as needed. Vanilla was sometimes in short supply during WWII. If vanilla extract was not available, a baker might use a teaspoon of bourbon, strong coffee, or simply leave it out. Synthetic vanilla flavoring grew in popularity and found its way into wartime cupboards.

Outside of wartime, baking chocolate was the preferred product for flavoring chocolate baked goods. However, during the war, chocolate rations were thought of as essential for soldiers, both to boost morale and to provide a portable energy food. As a result, baking chocolate was difficult for a home-baker to source, and cocoa powder combined with a little fat became a ready substitute.

Enjoy this super easy and very frugal chocolate cake!

1  2/3 cup flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

4 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (known to us as baking soda)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup water

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vinegar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (or bourbon, maple syrup, or strong coffee)

Use an ungreased 8 or 9-inch round layer cake pan or square 8 X 8-inch baking pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In the baking pan, mix the dry ingredients together, whisking to break up lumps with either a fork or wire whisk. Add liquid ingredients and mix in well. Bake for 33 to 40 minutes, until the center springs back when depressed with the press of a finger.

A dark chocolate glaze can be made with a couple of spoonfuls of cocoa powder, and about 1/4 cup of confectioners sugar, pinch of salt, and water to thin and blend. Heat this over Medium on the stove or in the microwave, stirring well to combine. The glaze should be the consistency of a thick syrup.

A glaze would have been more economical of rationed supplies (no butter or milk and less sugar overall) than a frosting and was often preferred for that reason. But also, cakes were often served simply, unadorned with icing, serving slices alongside a thin custard, a dish of fruit sauce, or just plain.

10 Protein-Rich Foods That Are Shelf-Stable For Your Pantry and Can Be Bought Online and Shipped

I discussed buying TVP the other day in the context of possible meat shortages and the alternatives for good protein sources. Today, I thought I'd share some of the other alternatives to fresh or frozen meat, specifically ones that can be bought online and shipped to your home, which by definition would need to be shelf-stable. 

For those of us who are staying in for the time being, this is a way to get meat and meat-alternatives delivered to your door. And for those of us who wish to have a couple of back-up items, these foods can stay in a pantry or on a closet shelf until needed. Most of these foods keep for at least 1 year, but attention should be paid to expiration dates on packages.

So, here's my list of 10 other foods (in addition to TVP) that are high in protein, shelf stable, and can be bought online.

• canned meat/fish, such as tuna, salmon, chicken, sausages, ham, Spam
• powdered Parmesan cheese, cheddar cheese powder
• dry and canned milk
• dairy and non-dairy liquid milk in aseptic packaging (the kind of package that is shelf-stable, like what kids' juice boxes are packaged in)
• powdered non-dairy milk, such as soy milk powder
• soy, whey, or veggie-based protein powder to mix with water or add to milk or smoothies
• peanut butter and other nut butters
• nuts and seeds
• dried beans combined with grain products, as well as bean flours to use in baking 
• shelf-stable tofu (not the water pack variety), such as Mori-Nu brand

Many of these foods can be found on common shopping sites such as Walmart.com and Amazon.com as well as in local stores. Some of the more specialty foods can be found on smaller, health food sites or through a manufacturer shopping portal.

No-Yeast Pizza Crust, Using My Sourdough Starter

A week ago, I posted about my new sourdough starter that I grew from just water and flour. I grew the starter, day by day, over the course of a week, adding more flour and water in morning and evening for seven days. Sunday evening, I used some starter to begin a batch of sourdough bread, using the recipe on this page. 

To make sourdough bread without any yeast whatsoever, I needed to begin the dough the day before I wanted to bake. By Monday morning, the sponge was ready to add sugar, salt, and additional flour. I turned half of the dough into a loaf of bread and used the other half to make pizza crust.

If you know sourdough, then you can imagine the cheesy taste it has. As a pizza crust, this was amazing. I will make sourdough pizza crust even after I have a lot of yeast again. The crust is tangy, crispy, and chewy.

The one major difference between making sourdough pizza crust and yeast-raised pizza crust is time. The sponge for the dough needs to sit overnight. Then the next day, after the rest of the ingredients are mixed in and the dough is kneaded, it needs to rise for a couple of hours. And finally, after the dough has been pressed into a circle on a greased baking sheet, it needs to rise for an hour to hour and a half before spreading with sauce, adding toppings, and baking. As the crust does not rise much at all once in the oven, a good period for rising before baking is necessary with a sourdough.

Like I said, I would make this even if I had lots of yeast to spare.

To TVP or Not to TVP: That is the Question

Does anybody, here, use TVP in their meals regularly?

TVP stands for Textured Vegetable Protein, also called TSP (textured soy protein). It's made from defatted soybeans, after the oil is extracted for making vegetable oil. The defatted soybeans are then processed into bits and chunks. If you've ever eaten a cheapo frozen burrito (hello, 7-11 from my college days), then you've probably had some TVP. It's that chewy bit mixed in with the other ingredients to fake a meat texture. Because it is made from beans (soybeans) so it has all of the protein associated with beans. Soybeans, in particular, contain all of the essential amino acids. And it can be really cheap, depending on where and how much you buy at any one time. The bits are often cheaper than the chunks; but the chunks are preferred for a more meaty approximation. Also, some TVP has wheat flour in it. There is also gluten-free TVP, which is oddly often less expensive than non gluten-free.

With so many US meat processing plants experiencing shutdowns due to COVID-19, it's my understanding that we could see some meat shortages in the next several months. Depending on how quickly the US can get the virus under control in the regions with these production facilities, these shutdowns could end in a couple of weeks, or go on for a couple of months. This situation is affecting the poultry, beef, and pork industry. And you know how it works with shortages, there may be some product, but what you find in the grocery store is more expensive than you're used to. So, with this in mind, I'm looking to other sources of high-quality protein to fulfill my family's nutrition needs. We've covered ourselves in the bean category, now on to TVP.

My experience  with TVP is with the bits, because, you know -- cheaper. So, here's what you need to know about TVP bits to see if they will work for you.

You can buy TVP prepackaged (Bob's Red Mill is one brand) in health food sections of the grocery store, in the bulk bins of some supermarkets, and online. It is very worth it to check prices at multiple places, as I found TVP for a reasonable price per pound as well as for pries that bordered on extortion levels. Years ago, we were able to buy TVP in bulk at a local upscale market for the lowest price per pound anywhere (99 cents/lb when other stores were charging $2.99/lb). Today, a great price per pound would be in the $3 to $4/lb range. As with many other food items, when you buy larger amounts at one time, you get a price break. I paid $3.19/lb this month, but bought 25 lbs to get that price. It is a lot of TVP. However, TVP lasts a couple of years in dry conditions ( it's shelf-stable).

You can buy plain TVP or flavored TVP. Flavored will cost you more. Plain TVP has little flavor of its own and takes on the flavors with which you cook it.

Plain TVP can be added to spaghetti sauce and taco/burrito filling, added to canned tuna to stretch a single can for more tuna sandwich servings, on top of rice and covered with gravy, in casseroles, soups and stews, made into patties or balls with the help of a binder, added to any hot cereal to boost the protein content, or even, as my husband likes, eaten just as it is, as a cold cereal with milk. But I think most folks use it in spaghetti sauce, casseroles, and soup.

TVP is a dry product. It rehydrates in hot water in about a 1:1 ratio, with maybe a bit less water than the dry TVP, and takes about 10 minutes for this step.

TVP keeps for a couple of years in my pantry. Official sites state that TVP needs to be kept in an airtight container in cool and dry conditions. The pantry is fine if you'll eat it within a year, but to extend it's shelf life, it can be stored in the fridge or freezer for 18 months.  In my personal experience, we've kept TVP for 2 to 3 years and had no issues with it, with no off-taste or odor.

1/4 cup of dry TVP contains 12 grams of protein, approximately the same amount of protein in 3 ounces of beef. When I serve beef to my family members, I serve about 3 ounces per person. There are 17 of these protein-based servings in 1 pound of dry TVP.  (I use grams of protein as my comparison data when looking at the cost per serving.) At the price I paid, $3.19/lb, each 12-gram protein serving cost about 19 cents. The current price for ground beef in my grocery stores is around $3/lb. So, a 3-ounce serving of beef would cost me about 56 cents. I admit, I did get a great price on TVP. But let's say I paid $4.99/lb for TVP (places to find it in that price range in a minute). At $4.99/lb, each serving would cost 29 cents. That's just under half the price of beef in my area. The price difference based on protein narrows until about $10/lb for TVP, compared to $3/lb for beef.

Our local Walmart sells Bob's Red Mill TVP for $3.28 for a 10-oz bag, that's $5.25/lb. You can find TVP online for less. I bought my 25-lb case at $3.19/lb from Nuts.com. They offer various levels of discount for buying in quantity. They carry this gluten-free TVP for $4.99/lb bought in 1-lb bags, $4.84 in 5-lb bags, $4.49 for 15 lbs, and down to $3.19 in the 25-lb case. A warning, 15 pounds is still a lot of TVP, yielding about 255 individual servings, while 25 pounds yields about 425 servings.

My suggestion for someone who has never tried TVP: buy a single bag (such as Bob's Red Mill 10-ounce bags from your local grocery store) to see if you like it. If you determine that it would work for your family, then search out larger quantities, such as what I found online. Nuts.com has a minimum order for free shipping -- $59. Otherwise the shipping to order just one 1-lb bag would make the TVP a bad value compared to current beef prices. (Per their website, shipping is $6.99 on orders under $59.) They do, however, carry a wide selection of pantry-stable foods, including dry yeast, which I know many folks have had a hard time finding locally.

Another option -- Swansonvitamins.com. Here's Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free TVP for $2.56/12-oz bag, or $3.41/lb. Shipping is $4.99 or free for orders over $50 (possible limited-time free shipping at $25 spend going on right now). 

One more place -- iherb.com carries Bob's Red Mill 10-oz bags for $3.70, which works out to $5.92/lb. The other day, retailmenot.com had iherb.com coupon codes for 5% off your total order, bringing the cost per pound down to $5.63/lb (working out to 33 cents per 12-gram protein serving). Iherb.com offers free shipping at $20 minimum purchase. (I used iherb just the other day for something else, powdered soy milk.) So far, I've been impressed with their site. They include specific expiration information on the page for the items -- something that you often don't know until you receive your order and look at the package for yourself. Depending on what else you might need that they carry, it may be easy to reach a $20 minimum purchase to get that free shipping.

Remember, when you make your price comparison between TVP and something like ground beef, TVP is a dehydrated product, while fresh meat is not. That is why I suggest comparing protein-comparable cost per serving, using a 3-ounce serving of ground beef (containing 12 grams of protein) compared to the cost for 12 grams of protein in TVP (which weighs about .9 of an ounce). 

Just a note--all of the above online sources had stock as of Saturday evening, but may be out of stock, presently.

If you made it this far, bravo! I wanted to share as much as I could so you would have something to base a choice on, should you also be looking for meat alternatives. I understand that TVP is not everyone's "thing." Some folks have digestive issues or allergies with soy. But for my family, it is working out well. 



And just so you know -- I have no connections to any of the above companies, except that I have ordered from each of them at one time or another.

Rhubarb Season is Here! Using the Pinch of Baking Soda Trick to Reduce Sugar When Cooking With Tart Fruit

Several years ago, I posted (here) about using baking soda to neutralize acids in fruit when making fruit pies or sauces. Doing so means that I can use less sugar in these fruity dishes and desserts. 

It's now rhubarb season in my area. This week, I made 2 batches of rhubarb sauce and 1 rhubarb pie. All 3 times, I used a bit of rhubarb (about 1/4 teaspoon soda for a quart of rhubarb), then reduced the sugar in those recipes by about 1/3 cup.

1/4 teaspoon baking soda per 1 quart of tart fruit to reduce sugar by 1/3 cup

If you're trying to conserve on sugar in homemade fruity recipes, such as pies, crisps, cobblers, sauces, and syrups, tiny amount of baking soda will spare quite a lot of sugar over the course of a season. 

In addition to using baking soda with rhubarb, I also use it in desserts, sauces, and syrups made with berries, tart apples, and sour cherries.

A Canning Jar Question for You

I had a busy morning the other day. I was organizing my canning supplies for this summer. I have such a range of sizes of jars, from 8-oz to 64-oz. Some of the small jars are very pretty and good for gifting. The largest jars are more utilitarian. As I was looking over each size, I wondered how best to use each size. I typically make salsa, pickles, relish, jams/jellies, and fruit in syrup. I stick to high-acid foods.

Here's my question: what size jars do you like to use for which preserved food and why? For example, do you go through a lot of salsa, so you like large jars of it, while you only use a little jam, so you prefer putting up jam in the smallest jars? Tell me, how do you like to use your canning jars? What has made the most sense for what you can and how much your family uses? Also, which foods do you prefer to freeze, because of texture or safety concerns?

I Keep Trying to Use Less and Less of Some Things -- This Time Coffee Filters

I was running low on my usual instant decaf coffee and since I had some rewards points to use at Walgreens (plus they were offering free shipping on any amount spent at that time), I decided to order my decaf from them. They were sold out online of instant decaf, so I ordered ground decaf coffee. No problem -- we have our old drip coffee maker I could use. I didn't even think about filters.

After a few days of brewing my decaf, I noticed the stack of coffee filters in the cabinet looked really scrawny. I'm used to buying store brand coffee filters at Walmart or Fred Meyer, or even from Dollar Tree. There have been no store brand coffee filters available for online shopping at any of these stores. And I wasn't about to spend double or triple what I'm used to for coffee filters, at least not yet.

So, I was wondering to myself just how many times you can reuse a coffee filter. I've scooped out used grounds and refilled a couple of times in the past, so this isn't completely new territory for me. My biggest concern is mold growth from reusing a coffee filter over multiple days. To counter that, this is what I've been doing. After I brew my coffee, I scoop/dump out the grounds, give the filter a quick rinse with water, then allow to dry until the next morning. Seems to be working.

one thing that surprised me -- coffee filter paper is relatively durable, much more so than the common college student coffee filter substitute -- paper towels. Paper towels do work in a pinch, though.

I was a bit hesitant to mention my coffee filter reuse here, as this may be a little too extreme for some folks' tastes. Then I found this article that completely backs me up. The article says that coffee filters can be reused at least 4 or 5 times. With that usage, I can make my dwindling supply last a couple of months.

This Was an Exciting Experiment: Making Sourdough Starter Using Only Flour and Water

You all know that I love a good kitchen experiment. In my quest to use less and less yeast in my home-baked bread, I thought of baking sourdough bread again. I've made sourdoughs before, using flour, water, and a bit of yeast. But you know, the old-time way to make a sourdough starter uses only water and flour. I was really curious just how difficult it is to get a starter going the old-fashioned way. And with the current situation of limited yeast availability, it seemed like a good time to try this out.

I didn't want to waste a lot of flour, so I began with a very small amount of good, unbleached flour (I used King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour). Filtered water would have been preferable, as chlorine might inhibit some fermentation activity. However, using what I had at home suited the nature of this experiment. So, tap water it was.

In a small glass bowl, I stirred about 1/4 cup of flour into lukewarm water, enough to make a thick pancake batter consistency. Then I placed the bowl in the oven with the door closed and the light on. I left it like this for 24 hours, without removing it from the oven or turning off the light. The electric light in the oven keeps it quite warm, without being too hot for the fermentation.

By the following morning, the top of the batter looked crusted over. I removed the bowl from the oven and could see through cracks in the dried top layer that there were bubbles underneath. 

The batter also smelled sour! I lifted the crusted surface and could see lots of bubbly activity going on below! How exciting -- a real sourdough starter without relying on commercial yeast to get it going.

I warmed a bit more water (about 1/4 cup) to just slightly warmer than room temperature and stirred this into my baby starter along with more flour (another 1/4 cup) and placed the bowl back in the oven with its light on. I checked on it about 10 hours later. It looked flat with layer of liquid on top. I stirred it up and could see bubbles forming right away. I fed it a little more flour and water and placed it back in the oven. Within an hour, it was bubbly. I suspect that I'll need to feed my starter twice per day for about 6 to 8 more days before it will be ready for a batch of bread. When the starter has grown sufficiently and is very active (sometime next week), I'll be baking a batch of San Francisco sourdough bread, using the recipe in this post. 


No need to buy that overpriced yeast on ebay or Amazon. I can bake bread without any commercial yeast at all.

Using Old Vegetable Seeds

This is just what frugal gardeners do, right? We try to use up all of the seeds in a packet, even if that packet is 3, 4, or 5 years old. It just feels wrong to us to throw them away without at least giving them a shot.

Like all gardeners, I have several of those old packets of seeds. I have 4 options with those seeds. 1) I could just toss them and start fresh with new seeds. 2) I could gamble on them sprouting in my garden and plant those seeds directly into the garden soil. 3) I could trial some of the seeds in a damp paper towel inside of a ziploc bag and placed in a warm spot in the kitchen, to see what percentage will sprout. Or 4) I could plant the seeds indoors in small-celled flats, keep warm and under lights, then transplant any tiny seedlings from the batch out into the garden once their big enough to move.

We already established that I'm not about to throw away seeds that could still have life in them.

My garden space is limited, so I don't want to just seed my garden with questionable seeds. If I were to devote a 4-foot square block to beet seeds and only a quarter of the seeds sprouted, I would have wasted all of the little pockets of bare soil in between the tiny seedlings from seeds that did sprout.

While option number 3 is very scientific (telling me exactly what proportion of seeds would sprout, if directly seeded in the garden, and then adjusting the quantity of seeds per planting hole accordingly), it sounds like a lot of extra work, when my aim is just to get some veggies to grow for our table.

Option number 4 is what I went for. I started seeds, old and new, in small-celled containers indoors.

I discovered that some seeds just don't last that long. For example, my yellow crookneck squash did not sprout at all. I planted 8 seeds in 4 cells and zero sprouted. These seeds were 6 years old. I still had about 6 seeds leftover in the packet, so I went ahead and plugged those seeds into the soil that didn't produce any sprouts. If they sprout, then good, I'll have some crookneck squash. But if they don't, I'm not out anything extra at this point. I did have success with my zucchini seeds, which is another type of summer squash, so we'll be fine in that department, at least.

I also discovered that 5 year old beet seeds do have quit a bit of viability. I started the beet seeds about 8 days ago and I have sprouts in a little over half of the cells, starting 1 to 2 seeds per cell (I aimed for 1 seed per cell but sometimes an extra would fall from my fingers). I'll wait another week and then carefully transplant all of the sprouted beet seeds/tiny seedlings to the garden. (You usually don't start root vegetables in containers, as these plants need lots of root space and soil nutrients to grow the vegetable. For that reason, I'll plant these out much sooner than I would plants like tomato or zucchini when started in a flat indoors.)

In all honesty, I think that option 3 is really the "smart" option, starting 10 seeds in a damp paper towel. The humidity is more controlled in a ziploc bag than in an open flat. If zero seeds sprouted, I could conclude that 6-year old seeds of a particular type are likely worth planting in the garden. But, hey, I don't always do the smartest thing. 


I read something interesting in the news the other day. In addition to everything else that screams self-sufficiency, garden centers and seed catalogs are rapidly selling out of seeds far earlier this year compared to other years. It seems that not only are we all baking bread and coloring our hair at home (yes, Walmart suggested that hair color is on the panic-buy list, too), but we are also all growing our own produce this summer. 

Of all of the hoarding or buying certain items when you've never done so before, I think starting a vegetable garden is one of the most helpful for all of us, as home gardens can help take the pressure off of tight food supply situations by creating more supply, even if that supply is private. This means that people who don't have the option to have a garden will have more to choose from in the stores and hopefully won't have to pay crazy high prices for a head of lettuce or fresh tomatoes this summer.

In my opinion, the home garden is so satisfying. Not only does it provide lots of fresh and delicious food for my family, but watching it all grow is exciting, too. Doing this frugally, by trying to use all of the viability in my aging vegetable seeds, was extremely satisfying for this tightwad gardener.

Even with a pandemic all around us, life still goes on . . .

. . . and people still have special occasions in their lives.

Tomorrow is a big day for me. It's one of those milestone birthdays (rhymes with "mixty"). 

Celebrating a birthday during a pandemic poses several challenges, obviously. There's no eating out, no travel, no special delivery from a florist, not even a gathering that would include all of my children. I don't expect any boughten gifts, as no one in my household has been able to go anywhere to shop. That's all really okay. 

So, I'm giving myself a gift. I'm giving myself a couple of days off from work -- from blogging, from earning money online (answering surveys and performing tasks), from cooking (unless cooking would please me), from stress. Today, Thursday, and Friday are just days for me to enjoy life, to cut some tulips from my yard, to eat chocolate, to have brunch and dinner at home with my two daughters and husband, to read a novel, to browse through the pile of magazines that I checked out from the library before they closed, and maybe to watch a movie at home (also checked out from the library back in February). I might have tea on the deck in the afternoon. And I might stay in my cozy pjs for half the day. It is enough to simply celebrate that I am still here and that I am blessed beyond measure in this world. 

When the virus has been suppressed to a level that it is safe again to go out and I can share a celebration with my son and daughter-in-law as well as my daughters and husband, then we'll do something to mark my special occasion as well as my daughters' birthday, Easter, and my husband's soon-to-be birthday. This could turn into a one celebration covers all spring events outing.

So, I'll be gone from my blog for the rest of this week and be back on Monday. I hope you all have a good rest of your week.

Which Ingredients Can Slow the Rise in Bread Dough and Why That Mattered This Weekend

Last week, I wrote about  my success in using half the yeast in homemade bread by "growing" the dough in multiple stages of a sponge. The sponge is the loose dough that usually has just yeast, water, flour, and small amounts of sugar and salt. After the sponge has developed into a bubbly mass, more flour and other ingredients can be added to make a stiff bread dough. My new-to-me method grows the sponge 4 or 5 times over the course of a long day. I keep the sponge warm in the oven with a light on and the door closed, and it takes about 1 to 2 hours to get the sponge super bubbly and ready to add more flour. The post in the link above gives more detailed info on how I've been doing this.

I indicated that one should add some ingredients to the sponge/dough at one of the last stages in mixing, to allow for better growth of the yeast. Today, I thought I'd share all of the ingredients that could slow the rise in the sponge and growth of the yeast.

• fats -- fat coats the gluten particles in dough, making it difficult for the gluten to combine with the rest of the dough. The gluten is what gives bread doughs that stretchy texture to hold bubbles of gas without collapsing on themselves. Too much fat in a recipe will cause a denser, less high loaf. Fat introduced in the sponge period can slow the yeast activity in the dough.
• sugar -- too much sugar can slow yeast activity, according to King Arthur Flour, sweet doughs with more than 1/4 cup of sugar per 3 cups of flour will have slower yeast development
• salt -- if too much added or too early -- too much salt "dehydrates" the yeast, starving it of necessary water for development
• milk -- I've read several explanations why milk may impair yeast activity, from proteins and enzymes, to bacteria present in the milk. Old-time recipes called for scalding the milk before use in yeast dough to counter bacteria. Enzymes and proteins are also changed when heated, resulting in a better bread when milk is scalded. Despite modern pasteurization, many bakeries prefer to use dry milk powder in breads. Dry milk powder also has reduced bacteria and altered enzymes and proteins, simplifying milk additions in the large-scale bakery process.
• whole wheat, specifically the bran in whole wheat -- the bran in whole wheat interferes with gluten development and can impair or slow a good rise in bread dough.

You can still use these ingredients in a reduced-yeast bread. It just may be better to add the bulk of these ingredients toward the end of growing sponges.

Over the weekend, I made our family's favorite holiday bread. The recipe called for 2  1/4 teaspoons of yeast, but I used only 1 teaspoon. This recipe makes a sweet, rich bread, using many of the ingredients on my list above. This is how I mediated those complicating factors and produced a good loaf with less than half the yeast.

I "grew" the dough over several hours with multiple steps of a sponge. I began with only the yeast, water, flour, salt, and a small amount of the sugar. I added the flour in portions, allowing the sponge to rise thoroughly in between each addition. With the particular rise-inhibiting ingredients, I made a few adaptations.

sugar -- I used less sugar to begin the dough, adding more in the last addition of flour.
fats -- I added the oil immediately before the last addition of flour instead of with the flour and sugar at the beginning.
milk -- I used water to soften and activate the yeast, then added dry milk powder with the final addition of flour with oil and extra sugar. The recipe had called for adding cooled, scalded milk for softening the yeast.

Here are two photos to show how much the sponge grows between additions of flour.

After about 1  1/2 to 2 hours after
the second flour addition,
all bubbly.

Just after stirring the sponge down.
It's still a little bubbly, but the level in the bowl is
about an inch lower than before stirring the sponge.

Time, warmth, and holding off on the addition of rise-inhibiting ingredients resulted in a loaf of a family favorite bread, using less than half of the yeast.



(Just a note -- for the last couple of months, I've had some significant issues with my aging computer. I think I downloaded a virus and it messed up my storage disk. In my attempts to fix this, I somehow deleted a bunch of stuff related to my various Google accounts. This blog, and a lot of other blogs you may visit, is a Google product. Well, one of the end results is I can't always access my own Google accounts. It's as if Google "forgot" who I was. I even have trouble with my own blog, especially with responding to comments. I was locked out of the comments for one of my posts for several days this past week. I've read that I should uninstall, then reinstall some stuff on my computer, but I need to back everything up first. I'm still at that point in fixing my issues. Anyways, if I were to "disappear" for a few days, it could very well be that my computer died and I can't use public library access during this pandemic. It's frustrating not having the skills to fix this, as I seem to only make things worse with each attempt. But I am working on it.)

An Abundance of Early Spring Garden Greens Made into Soup

Early spring gardens brings lots of greens but not much else. In the last week, I've used these greens in several cream soups. We call them Cream of Green Soup. I've used kale, watercress, radish greens, sorrel, and chives for these soups. All were delicious and a great way to incorporate excess garden greens into meals.

Cream of Green Soup is simple to make. It's just a thin white sauce with steamed greens incorporated and pureed. (I like to thin the white sauce with homemade chicken stock to boost the flavor.) Add a little onion powder/garlic powder and spices/seasonings to taste, and the soup is ready to serve.

No Egg, No Milk Applesauce Cake With Apple Cider Sauce

This cake is one of those great dessert recipes for when supplies are limited. As the weeks pass, I am relying more and more on what is on the pantry for baking, for instance the applesauce that is in this cake. There's a delicious apple cider (or juice) sauce for topping this cake. I used frozen apple juice concentrate. I'll note, my recipe card says that you can also use orange juice for the sauce and then it becomes an applesauce cake with orange sauce. I made a couple of substitutions and will note those in parentheses.

Applesauce Cake

1  2/3 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup brown sugar (or white sugar with a spoonful of molasses added to the liquids)
1  1/2 teaspoons ground allspice (or cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg or any combination)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional, pecans would also be tasty)

Mix flour, sugar, spices, baking soda, salt, and nuts with a fork in an ungreased 8 X 8 X 2-inch baker. Stir together the liquid ingredients and incorporate with the dry in the pan.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees F, or until the top springs back when pressed lightly.

Cool.

Meanwhile, make the sauce in a stainless steel saucepan.

Apple Cider Sauce

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup margarine or butter (I used 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons vegetable oil)
1/4 cup apple cider, apple juice, or orange juice
2 tablespoons heavy cream (I used milk)

--the recipe calls for cream. I found if I use milk, the particles separate. The following starch and water slurry mixed in helps pull the sauce back together.

1/2 teaspoon corn starch
1 tablespoon water

In a saucepan, heat the first four ingredients to  rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. If using milk and the solids separate, stir in a slurry of the starch and water and cook until slightly thickened. Note -- this is still a thin sauce.

Spoon the sauce over individual servings of the cake.

The cake recipe is one of those Depression Era recipes that assumed some folks may have had access to cheap apples (orchard drops or seconds) and foraged nuts, but little milk or eggs. The sauce would make this fancier than an everyday cake. In any case, my family thinks this is a very delicious cake and would never feel they are deprived or living through a Depression eating it.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Homemade Easter Treats: Candy Bird Nests

Making nests, using Wilton pink melting chips (like white chocolate but already colored), coconut, Crisco shortening, and jelly beans.

You can also make these with chocolate chips and coconut. Here's a chocolate version that I made a couple of years ago.

Some Vegetable Garden Updates

A salad spinner full of over-wintered kale to use in tonight's dinner. Still lots of kale, chives, watercress, and sorrel growing in the garden. I also spied some Swiss chard about to come back from fall planting in one of the beds. This time of year there are lots of greens.

These are my 6 baby tomato plants that I started from old seeds about the first of March. There were a couple of weeks where the plants didn't look very healthy. I moved them to the center of my light fixture and they seemed to perk up quite a bit.

Baby Romaine lettuce plants. I'm hoping they'll be ready to transplant around May 1. That would give us salads by early June.

I check on the rhubarb every day. The stalks seem to grow about 1/2 to 1 inch per day this time of year. I think I'l be able to pick enough for a pie for my husband's birthday around the 20th.

Experimenting With Baking Bread Using Half the Yeast

Yeast is one of the ingredients of which I am a little low -- not about to run out, but I feel like I should conserve. For the past 3 types of bread products that I've made, I've experimented with using less yeast. The first was a batch of hot dog buns where I used about 3/4 the usual yeast. For the last two, a batch of French bread and a batch of half white, half whole wheat sandwich bread, I used half of the called-for amounts of yeast.

Lots of time, lots of attention

• Start early in the day to allow for maximum growth of a sponge
• Feed the sponge several times over the period of the day

I began with the water, yeast, sugar, salt, and enough good bread flour to make a sponge that was about the consistency of thick pancake batter. I did not add any fat at this point. Set it in a warm place, the oven with only the interior light on, and allowed it to develop for an hour or two.

Next, I added about one-fourth of the remaining flour. Stirred it for two minutes, the put it back into a warm place for another hour or two.

Then, I added another fourth of the flour, stirring well, and placed it again in the warm spot.

Repeated the above one more time.

With my dough now expanded quite a bit, I added the oil called for and the last of the flour, stirring well. Again, I placed it back into the warm spot.

When the dough had risen, I punched it down and allowed to stand for 10 minutes. I kneaded the dough thoroughly. I, then, divided it into loaves and put in pans (on baking sheet for the French bread), and placed in the warm spot until risen. Lastly, I baked the loaves.

I was somewhat surprised and pleased that my old recipes could work with half the amount of yeast. The original recipes for these breads come from different sources, written in various decades. 

This method of mixing only a portion of the flour with yeast, water, and other ingredients is often referred to as a long-sponge method. The loose dough is the sponge. My method for using half the amount of yeast, but working on the sponge several times over the course of a day is almost like a condensed version of developing a sourdough starter, growing the dough by feeding the yeast over time. (Only, because I grew the dough over just one day, the bread did not have the usual sourdough tang.) I suspect that this method  that I experimented with was used by many home bakers in times past, when faced with needing to conserve commercial yeast.

Different bread recipes call for different amounts of yeast. For reference: the 2 loaves of sandwich bread used 1 and 1/8 teaspoon of yeast for 8 cups of flour. The recipe in my 1957 cookbook calls for 2  1/4 teaspoons of yeast for the 2 loaves. 

Using less yeast may not be possible with some recipes, especially if they already call for very little yeast. But for my situation, I was able to halve my yeast use and still bake very light and fluffy bread.