Ummmmm....Canned BREAD????

[TurtleMama]

So DH and I purchased a book called "Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens."

 

In it, there is a recipe for CANNED BREAD. It sounds odd to me. I won't write down the whole recipe here, but it includes sugar, flour, eggs, shortening, copped fruit and spices, among other things. Then she says to put the batter in greased canning jars ("taking care not to grease the rims"), put them on a cookie sheet, and bake them...then wipe the rims and top each with a two-piece canning lid. She says the jars will seal and can be sored for weeks to months in storage.

 

I ain't no canning expert, but this recipe sounds suspicious to me. Violet...is this a safe recipe? If it's not, I'm very concerned about it being in a book that many preppers might have on their shelves.

[Cat]

Yeah, that little thing came into fashion some years back. People got all excited about it. Then it was found that they are best suited for gift-giving, short-term. Might as well bake 'em in pans and wrap them up.

 

Some of our threads on it -

 

Applesauce cake in a jar

http://mrssurvival.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=35764&st=0&p=304540

 

 

Cake in a jar

http://mrssurvival.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=34177&st=0&p=290081

 

 

Can we please review what we *can't* can? (page 2)

http://mrssurvival.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=22916&st=30&p=271878

 

 

Canned breads or fruit cake

http://mrssurvival.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29712&st=0&p=241928

 

 

[Amishway Homesteaders]

................................. oh but they taste so good!

 

The cake one is great to mail to someone for a Happy Birthday Surprize!

mailed it with a card and 4 candles and a book of matches as a ha,ha.

Went over big!

 

But I know the 'ladies' here don't like us to can that one?

[sassenach]

Ok, what they listed are very short term ,, for PROPER CANNING , This recipe is an absolute :

 

NO NO NO!!!

 

Turtlemama, I keep powdered eggs in the long term dehydrated storage , done commercially. I get them from honeyvillegrain.com

 

I use those a lot already in my baking when it requires eggs. One can also get egg whites dehydrated like that.

 

I use those and shortening and lard keep pretty well long term enough.

 

As for fresh eggs unless you have chickens in good health and feed enough and a way to keep them safe from predators that may be the only way you would have fresh eggs after a few weeks, in any crisis. Or a good neighbor who can keep you supplied ....

 

Canning bread the way we can things with a pressure canner is just not safe long term at all.

Edited June 18, 2012 by arby

[Violet]

NO WAY !!! You can get botulism. Only take a couple days for botulism to grow in an amount to kill you. Some birthday gift !

 

Send them a dry mix for a cake in a mug instead. It is cute and tastes good. No botulism involved.

[Ambergris]

http://www.amazon.com/Brown-Bread-Raisins-16-Ounce-Cans/dp/B001EO5Y8E

 

My husband loves this stuff. I used to have twenty cans of it set back. Some things are worth leaving to the professional kitchens.

Edited June 18, 2012 by Ambergris

[TurtleMama]

No botulism involved! LOL That's funny, Violet!

 

Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm just so worried that baby preppers will get a hold of this book, "can" a bunch of this bread, and kill themselves and their families!!!

[Gunplumber]

When I was a wee lad in PA, one of my favorite deserts was "Boston Brown Bread" and it came in a can. For years, nobody understood what I was talking about. Then I watched an episode of Anthony Bordaine's "No Reservations" where he was in New Hampshire, or Maine, and they were cooking this bread in a can. Boiling actually. Heavy on the molasses. Tin foil lid was duct taped in place. Fantastic.

 

 

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/boston_brown_bread/

[Andrea]

LOL - they still sell that in grocery stores here, Gunplumber. I've been tempted to try it but I'm too cheap to pay almost $6.00 for one small can!

[Crazy4Canning]

The canned breads and cakes are a big "No No"

 

A few years back, someone sent jars of cake to some troops overseas. Somehow it got by all security checks. By the time it arrived in the hot desert, botulism was in full swing. It took way too long for someone to narrow down the illness to a care package. It was very sad that we almost killed our own troops instead of the enemy.

 

This is the best example I know of a reason NOT to can cakes and breads.

[Gunplumber]

you've got part of the story. "Canning" in glass jars, versus "canning" in a metal can. Any low acid, high water content food is at risk for Clostridium botulinum.

 

This includes corn, asparagus, green beans, garlic & oil, and beets. They need to be processed in pressure-cooker as jars aren't designed for the type of dry heat one would need ( 240F.)

 

The "troops got sick" is a myth. It never happened. At least nobody has ever been able to produce a single report of it in the last 20 years. The Spanish American War - yeah, that was bad, but canned rations were in their infancy. Part of my Special Forces Medical training was on classifying and identifying bacteria on a slide, and I'm also state certified as a food safety inspector (well, I'm sure it's expired, but I haven't "forgotten")

 

Anyway, Botulism is pretty rare. If you aren't comfortable canning bread in jars, don't. If you are, keep the temp up in a pressure cooker.

 

I'm not sure how bread is canned in metal cans. I've done volunteer work at our local cannery and it always seems to be dry goods (beans) and jams, so that's not very applicable.

 

The current military shelf-table bread (which tastes surprisingly good) is vacuum sealed in mylar-type material

Edited June 21, 2012 by Gunplumber

[Violet]

The commercial industry has not only multimillion dollar equipment compared to your little $100 or so pressure canner, they use chemical additives in their foods. Not something we can duplicate at home.

 

Just bake the bread the usual way and freeze it. There is a great recipe for hobo bread that is similar to the canned boston brown bread.

 

Idk about reports of botulism from sending the bread overseas, but they have arrived all moldy. However, the potential for botulism is there, still.

[motherearth]

what ya gonna do when there are no freezers and there is no electricity???????/and ya got to can everything????when

[Violet]

Sure not can bread !! Will have a fire or hopefully enough propane to can safe foods. I have faith in God to supply all my needs.

[sassenach]

If you want to stock up you can order the B &M brand brown bread , commercial brand a lot of us grew up with ? , amazon.com carries it at a fair price by the six in a case I believe, compared to local store prices compared to what I and some others here have observed. I was planning on getting some to add to preps.

[themartianchick]

In a situation, I assume that you would bake bread as needed. In the summer, I can only keep home baked bread for about 4 or 5 days before mold takes up residence. In a , breadmaking would probably occur every 3 days or so and be kept sealed in a bag or covered in a casserole dish or something. I also imagine that we'd consume more quickbreads like cornbread, zucchini bread, pumpkin bread, biscuits, tortillas, etc... than actual sliced bread. I guess I just don't see the need for canning bread. Preserving fruits and veggies while in season will be critical, but bread? Not so much...

[CrabGrassAcres]

I don't see much point in it, myself. Make pancakes, flat bread, biscuits, cornbread fresh as needed. Even if you don't have an oven, some things can be made in a skillet on top of the stove.

[Mother]

what ya gonna do when there are no freezers and there is no electricity???????/and ya got to can everything????when

 

Good question. It puts me in mind of the fact that I might not always be able to make bread for many reasons. I guess the first that comes to mind is the problem of the smell of baked goods. But then any baking, cooking, or canning process would be the same. The smell could bring in undesirables. The second might be that our supply of yeast, soda, or baking powder might be depleted. Though in that case we could use sour dough leavening or perhaps beaten egg whites if we have eggs. You could still use both for biscuits, pancakes, and such.

 

It's possible if I were able to find a safe time to bake bread that I might want to make enough to last a long long time to cut down on the dangers of the smell at other times. But would canning be the answer even then? If things are that bad then it's likely that canning supplies would be at a premium as well. Possibly even the fuel to can or bake. In the past our pioneer forefathers kept bread for quite some time in a crock. Kept it a bit cooler and it didn't spoil as quickly. We could use swamp coolers in some areas, or basements or the double crockery type coolers found in warm countries. (not sure of their names) But canning it, even if it were considered safe, would probably not be the best use of our supplies.

 

I believe if I DID bake bread in that situation I would most likely use what I could fresh and dry the rest for other uses. Great for bread pudding if you have some sort of sweetener, for stradas with eggs and veggies, as a type of rusk toast, breading, croutons, and etc. Drying bread allows one to keep it a long time if it is kept dry. Perhaps the canning jars might be used for that instead.

 

But another question might be, would we really need bread? What about just cooking the grain, or what about making crackers with the cooked grain that can be dehydrated instead of baked. Adding grain to a stew or soup is another use of our stored grains. We LIKE bread but in a survival situation it might not be absolutely essential unless we are trying to retain our current way of life after TSHTF. I'm not sure that's going to be possible if times are so tough that we have to can bread to preserve it.

 

A good thought provoking topic though.

[The WE2's]

I agree with NOT trying to bake in a glass jar...what if it should break or explode? I think I'll stick to using my solar oven and a foil loaf pan. If there's not enough solar gain, guess we'll eat biscuits or cornbread from a skillet or dutch oven. I guess "to each their own"?

[lumabean]

So DH and I purchased a book called "Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens."

 

In it, there is a recipe for CANNED BREAD. It sounds odd to me. I won't write down the whole recipe here, but it includes sugar, flour, eggs, shortening, copped fruit and spices, among other things. Then she says to put the batter in greased canning jars ("taking care not to grease the rims"), put them on a cookie sheet, and bake them...then wipe the rims and top each with a two-piece canning lid. She says the jars will seal and can be sored for weeks to months in storage.

 

I ain't no canning expert, but this recipe sounds suspicious to me. Violet...is this a safe recipe? If it's not, I'm very concerned about it being in a book that many preppers might have on their shelves.

 

I bought that book too. I was just looking through the recipe section again the other day and remembered seeing the thread on canned bread here so popped over to read. You know, before I visited Mrs S. that would have been something I'd have been trying ... scary though, huh?!

 

As I've been reading online and in print, alarms keep going off because folks are making suggestions about all sorts of things that don't jibe with the safety cautions given here -- and I keep thinking 'how many people are going to get sick, or heaven forbid DIE from these recipes/ideas' and I am all the more thankful that I stumbled across this site to learn what's safe.

[mommato3boys]

I don't see much point in it, myself. Make pancakes, flat bread, biscuits, cornbread fresh as needed. Even if you don't have an oven, some things can be made in a skillet on top of the stove.

 

 

I will have to agree with CGA on this, I am not going to use my canning supplies to can bread. We are not big bread eaters. My family prefers cornbread over yeast breads. I can't think of a meal that I could not substitute corn bread or flat bread for any yeast bread I would normally serve.

 

Not only that but flat bread cooks faster and uses less fuel.

[Andrea]

So DH and I purchased a book called "Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens."

 

In it, there is a recipe for CANNED BREAD. It sounds odd to me. I won't write down the whole recipe here, but it includes sugar, flour, eggs, shortening, copped fruit and spices, among other things. Then she says to put the batter in greased canning jars ("taking care not to grease the rims"), put them on a cookie sheet, and bake them...then wipe the rims and top each with a two-piece canning lid. She says the jars will seal and can be sored for weeks to months in storage.

 

I ain't no canning expert, but this recipe sounds suspicious to me. Violet...is this a safe recipe? If it's not, I'm very concerned about it being in a book that many preppers might have on their shelves.

 

I bought that book too. I was just looking through the recipe section again the other day and remembered seeing the thread on canned bread here so popped over to read. You know, before I visited Mrs S. that would have been something I'd have been trying ... scary though, huh?!

 

As I've been reading online and in print, alarms keep going off because folks are making suggestions about all sorts of things that don't jibe with the safety cautions given here -- and I keep thinking 'how many people are going to get sick, or heaven forbid DIE from these recipes/ideas' and I am all the more thankful that I stumbled across this site to learn what's safe.

 

Luma - all you can do is offer people the link to the USDA Canning Guidelines: http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html and suggest that they may want to do some research before they try any recipe they read online. I've finally learned my lesson after being repeatedly "flamed" at certain preparedness/homesteading type forums. The last time was absolutely ridiculous. Someone was telling another that it was perfectly safe to water bath green beans, carrots, and meat, they just had to make sure and process them for several hours. When I brought up the safety issues as well as the simple fact that pressure canning is significantly faster and uses fewer resources, I was RAKED over the coals. WHAT WAS I GOING TO DO WHEN THE $HIT HIT THE FAN?!? PRESSURE CANNING WOULDN'T BE AVAILABLE, AND YOU HAD TO FEED YOUR FAMILY, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH . . . I asked this person what they were going to do when the person she was giving advice to sued her for killing her children? My user name and password suddenly ceased to work at that forum. LOL Apparently I'm a Troll!

 

 

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I second the use of flat breads in disaster situations. You can even make flat breads out of regular yeast bread dough. It makes the breads wonderfully puffy and full of yeasty goodness and if you do it correctly, you can actually make pockets out of the bread and fill them with beans and rice.

[Violet]

Andrea, I see no problem using a pressure canner as being any more difficult that using a boiling water bath canner in hard times. You need heat no matter what. Plus pressure canning takes less time and less water inside the canner, less fuel due to lower times.... I sure don't get uneducated people trying to tell you any different ! You know you are welcome here !!

What they going to do if they kill themselves with botulism , just as you said ?

[lumabean]

Hopefully those who saw your posts prior to her deleting your username were given food for thought and will choose to rethink going along with her advice and will choose to be safe.