16 May 2008
without electricity etc
Baking bread in an oven is very inefficient cooking.
If fuel or electricity to run your oven becomes a problem, another way of baking bread is flat bread in a shallow iron pan or iron plate.
Make the dough of only wheat, water and salt. No yeast!
Take a piece of dough about half the seize of an egg and roll it flat with a roller pin or even a bottle will do. Make the shape round and thin like a paper.
Iron absorbs heat very quickly. Therefore try to find an iron pan. Indian grocery stores will sell the "tava", a flat iron pan for baking breads.
No oil or butter needed. Bake the flat bread in a dry pan one minute each side untill it puffs up. This is the Indian "capati" resembling the thicker Mexican wraps. You can easily fill the bread with cooked or raw vegetables. Tastes good and is fast cooking with the least of energy or fuel.
The Indians are survivalists. I've learned a lot of them.
Another tip.
Save your old kitchen frying oils in a container. Whenever you need to make a fire take a cast iron pan - a Chinese wok - put small pieces of wood inside the pan on top of a piece of paper and pour some oil on top. This will easily ignite your fire and by dripping oil into the fire now and then it will keep it going for a long time.
Place a grid on top of the wok or three metal pins and place your cooking pot on the grid above the fire!
Place the wok between four bricks to prevent burning the floor inside your house or the grass outside.
If you cannot find any wood you can also take dried cow dung mixed with straw. Cow dung will burn very slowly and steadily. One cake will burn about 4 to 6 hours. Cow dung is anticeptic.
a magenesium stick, produces a hot white flame. you have ti scrape some magnesium of your magnesium stick and then some wood with it and you can make a fire that way. On the magnesium stick i have there is one side for creating flame and other side to scrape off the magnesium. Its a survival tool for backpacking
yea there is a strip of flint on the magnesium bar, and you ignite the magnesium by scraping the flint to make sparks! http://media.rei.com/media/407152Prd.jpg
