Gluten is produced through the kneading process. As you knead the dough, the protein in the wheat is converted into gluten, which makes it gooey. It’s this gluten that turns the dough into a balloon so that it traps all the gasses produced by the yeast and helps it rise really well. So, if you don’t have enough protein in your flour or if you don’t knead long enough, you won’t get enough gluten and the bread won’t rise well.

I think this is probably where the notion that ground wheat doesn’t rise well came from. Not enough kneading and/or using the wrong type of wheat. “Hard Red” wheat has the highest protein content with as much as 15% for spring wheat. That’s even higher than bread flour. Hard or soft “White” wheat has a much lower protein content and thus, won’t produce a fluffy sandwich bread without adding extra gluten. So, with all of that said, here is the recipe. I’ve provided links to the various ingredients. Enjoy!

Sandwich Bread Loaf:

Dry Ingredients:

• 3.5 Cups of Ground Hard Red Wheat Flour
• 2 TBSP of Ground Flax Seed
• 1 TBSP of Salt
• 2 TBSP of Soy Lecithin

Wet Ingredients:

• 12 oz. of Warm Water
• 2 TBSP of Olive Oil
• 2 tsp Instant Dry Yeast
• 2 TBSP of Honey

Instructions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together into the mixer bowl. Don’t add the yeast to the dry ingredients.
2. Now add the dry yeast, oil and honey to the warm water and stir it around with a fork vigorously until all of the honey is dissolved.
3. Now walk away and let the yeast liquid sit and fester for about 15 minutes. The yeast is going to get really active and start to foam up(this is called “proofing” the yeast).
4. Start the mixer on medium speed, using dough hooks, and let the dry ingredients get thoroughly mixed together.
5. Now begin drizzling the yeast liquid mixture into the bowl until the whole thing is mixed in.
6. Knead the dough on medium speed for 15 minutes.
7. Flour the counter top and dump the dough out onto it.
8. Knead the dough by hand for a few minutes just to make sure it’s smooth and not too wet.
9. Now stretch and shape the dough into a ball with the seam at the bottom.
10. Clean and dry out your mixing bowl and then spray it inside with cooking spray or wipe it with oil.
11. Drop your dough ball into the bowl seam side down and shoot it with a light shot of cooking spray also.
12. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a hand towel and let sit for an hour or until it doubles in size.
13. After it doubles, uncover and punch down the dough to get all the air out. Don’t punch it hard, just make sure it’s deflated good.
14. Now turn it out on the floured countertop again and knead it very lightly for about a minute. You just want to work it a little to get it back to a good shape.
15. Now, crisco the inside of a loaf pan. Use plenty of lard/crisco. You don’t want the loaf sticking to the pan. That’s a disaster.
16. Form the dough into a square shape, seam side down, and drop it into the loaf pan.
17. Cover and let sit again until it rises about an inch above the sides of the pan.
18. Mix one egg together with 2 TBSP of cold water in a small bowl. Using a sauce brush, wipe the top of the loaf thoroughly with the egg/water mixture(called an egg wash) so that it’s coated good. You can also crush up some almonds and sprinkle them on top for a nice touch.
19. Lower your oven rack to a little below center and put the pan on the rack.
20. Set the oven to 400° F and set the timer to 30 minutes.
21. When the timer goes off the bread is done. Let it cool on a wire rack for about an hour, then slice and eat.

I’m going to take a page from Jack Spirko here and list the three things that worry us most in life: putting food on the table, keeping a roof over our heads, and clothing ourselves. Food, shelter, clothing. Those are the three staples that, if taken care of ahead of time, will help us to have a comfortable “retirement.” In order to do that, we need to focus on these things:

1. Paying off our homes and turning our homes into producers.
2. Increasing our food production and designing our life to be more simple.
3. Storing up money in an inflation resistant way.
4. Expanding our knowledge/skills to be less dependent on external systems.

The first thing we need to do is focus on getting out of debt and paying off our homes as quickly as possible. The myth that your home will forever increase in value has been exposed. It’s a lie. In reality, it takes constant in-flows of money to keep our homes in good shape, and the market can destroy your home’s value as easily as it increased it. We need to jettison that huge albatross of a mortgage from around our necks. Once you get rid of that $1200 per month mortgage, you have eliminated item of worry number one: shelter. And you’ve given yourself a $14,000 per year raise to boot. Yay!

Next, we need to focus on ramping up our own food production and learn to live more simply. Think about it: if you invest $75 in a bundle of 5 pear trees that will, in turn, produce a harvest of pears every year for decades afterwards, that’s a huge return on your investment. And if you take the time to learn the art of grafting/cloning, you can replicate new pear trees yourself and have a perpetual supply of pears for the rest of your life. Investing $500 in apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, lemon trees will produce thousands of dollars worth of savings for the rest of your life, and probably on into your children’s lives as well.

The same is true for gardening in general. If you can begin to produce 10-20% of your own food supply, you’ve turned your home into a producer instead of being a constant money pit. You can spend $2 on a packet of heirloom tomato seeds and be able to save enough seeds each year that you will never have to buy tomatos again. These are real investments that pay back huge returns. Instead of dropping $50 into a mutual fund, spend that $50 on the necessary equipment to get started canning and preserving your harvest. Learning these things aren’t just quaint throwbacks to the past. They are real ways to live your life that save money and reduce your dependence on others. Next time you need some yeast, don’t just run down to the store and buy instant yeast. Try your hand at growing your own. It’s these little things that preserve the knowledge of the past that will give you the most freedom.

We, of course, also need to save money. But, if we just shove cash under the mattress it’s not going to do us much good. Those dollars will be losing value at a 3-4% clip every year due to inflation. In that case, we should put our money in the form of things that hedge against inflation. Silver is a fantastic inflation hedge. Let’s use another Jack Spirko example. In 1970 the average cost of a new car was $4000. At $1.64 per ounce(silver price in 1970), that’s 2,439 ounces of silver to buy a new car. Well, today, silver is currently running at about $16 per ounce, but let’s make it $12 per ounce to be really conservative since that’s what it was trading at back at the first of the year. That means that the same 2,439 ounces of silver it took to buy a new car in 1970 is worth $29,268 today. That would still buy you a really nice brand new car. That’s what it means to be a hedge against inflation. The same amount then buys the same amount now.

Jack recommends roughly 10-15% of your long-term savings in gold/silver. I’d say that’s a little low. I’d personally feel better in the 20-25% range, but that’s a personal decision that each person has to make for themselves. The point is, it’s a bad idea to dump all of your money into one thing. Even if it’s something stable like silver. There are other inflation hedges such as commodity indexes and such that are worth investing in. Even local businesses that you believe in. Just do some research and be creative. I showed in the last post how volatile the stock market is. It’s not the panacea it’s been made out to be.

You may think that what I’ve just outlined is strange, but this is the way our great-grandfather’s generation lived. They lived simpler lives and depended on the land more. Everyone loves to wax nostalgic for the simpler times of their grandparents, but nobody seems to want to actually live that way. But, I really think that in the future we won’t have any choice but to go back to that way of living. The good times of the boom cycle are over, and if we don’t want to work ourselves all the way to age 90 in the same ol’ high stress rat race, we’ll have to take these types of steps to do it.

*I mentioned Jack Spirko a couple of times in this post. Many of these ideas are directly influenced by him. Check out his podcast at The Survival Podcast.

Monsanto was predictably demonized in the film. They have been a favorite target of the hard left and environmental groups ever since Vietnam when they manufactured “Agent Orange” and later “DDT.” This wasn’t necessarily fair though, since many other chemical companies manufactured those products as well. Their record of chemical dumping, such as in Anniston, AL has also gained them much grief and drove them to the verge of bankruptcy under the weight of all of the lawsuits. Their new emergence as an agricultural company gave them a fresh start in the public opinion realm, but they soon stepped in it again with the whole patented seeds issue. They just seem to be a magnet for bad P.R. Patenting and genetically modifying seeds, I think, is one idea that they and the farm community as a whole is going to live to regret. I said yesterday that they have sold their soul to the government for short term gain. I think that’s the real evil behind the whole thing. I did my research and came up with some conclusions that I’ll share with you.

First off, it’s important to recognize that just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Abortion is legal, but it’s not moral. In Alabama, firing someone for no cause is legal. But it’s a bad idea. Who would want to work for you? In the same way, Monsanto has put all of it’s recent efforts since the late 90′s into patenting certain strains of seeds that are resistant to weed killer. These are the so-called “Roundup Ready” seeds that have been genetically altered to be resistant to Monsanto’s weed-killer chemical called Round Up. Because these plants are un-harmed by Round Up, the field can now be flooded with weed killer and everything dies, except the crop.

Obviously, you can see the benefit of this. Weed management is a breeze now and much less labour intensive. But, I hope you also see the inherent down side. We now harvest crops that have been saturated with weed killer. Who knows what long term effects that has to the plant, and consequently, to us as consumers. The whole thing strikes me as a really bad idea. We’re always assured that things are safe in the beginning. It’s not until a few decades go by that we often see the unintended side-effects of what we do.

I’m more interested, however, in the patent aspect of all this. It’s my firm belief that patents are immensely harmful to society, across the board, without exception. Patents are entirely created by government. Without government, patents don’t exist. In fact, patents have really only existed for about 200 years, starting in 1790(yes, I’m aware of common law patent writs before then, but I’m talking about codified law). Before then, businesses and entrapeneurs did just fine, and innovation wasn’t “stifled.” But, Monsanto relies exclusively on the validity of patent law to make their moral case against farmers who save their seed:

Food, Inc. Fiction: The film states/suggests that the ability to patent plants and living organisms came into being only in the 1980s.

Truth: Plants have long been subject to provisions of U.S. patent law, and plants were patented long before the 1980s.

The film, Food, Inc., briefly raises the issue of patents on seeds in the United States. The patenting of seeds was first permitted under the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Since that time the law has developed as technology has advanced.

–Monsanto’s Food, Inc. Page

That just doesn’t cut it with me. The Plant Patent Act of 1930 specifically excluded the patenting of plants that propagate “sexually or tubers”, so technically Monsanto is wrong. Patenting of asexual varieties at least makes sense, since you’d have to get them from the creator every year anyway. But, the spirit of Monsanto’s defense is just wrong. Patents are destructive devices that corrupt the free market and inhibit innovation. Just look at what happened with the patenting of the cotton gin, airplanes, television, and most recently, software patents. These patents completely screwed up the market and hurt consumers. The Wright brother’s patenting of the “flying machine” so screwed up the airplane industry(which existed way before their patent), that by the time of WWI we had to purchase most of our airplanes from the French. This has been the consistent legacy of patent law.

And, what it takes in order to police the whole endeavor ultimately just infuriates people. The Monsanto “seed police” remind me of the Business Software Alliance that many software vendors entered into a few years ago. The BSA hasn’t been nearly as active recently as they used to be in prosecuting small businesses for software piracy. The reason is that software makers got a lot smarter about how to handle piracy, such as using product activation, so that they no longer have to go “bust” people in the community and generate so much bad publicity. Monsanto should learn that lesson. The RIAA and MPAA campaigns against users for downloading music should also be sufficient evidence to show any company that it doesn’t matter how good of an argument you make for the legality of patent law. The public just doesn’t buy it as being morally ok to come after people for “intellectual theft.” It just doesn’t fly.

Monsanto has also put their own guys in government, and in turn hired former government officials. This fuels suspicion of the company, and with good reason. If I’m their competitor it would infuriate me to know that former Monsanto executives were now holding key positions inside the USDA, FDA and EPA. Just like former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson became Treasury Secretary, it ruins any credibility on both sides. Just a cursory look into the matter shows that Michael Taylor, the VP of Public Policy(i.e. lobbyist) at Monsanto, was appointed to the FDA by Barack Obama. Bush also appointed Linda Fisher, another lobbyist for Monsanto, to the EPA. Michael Friedman also joined one of Monsanto’s subsidiaries after leaving his position as the head of the FDA. All of this reliance on government to get their job done is going to come back and bite them at some point. Trust me. It always does. Just ask GM and Chrysler.

If Monsanto wants it’s credibility back, it needs to once and for all stop relying on the government. Quit the legal tricks and worn out patent rhetoric and start leading the charge to re-empower small growers in a way that doesn’t require policing them. They control the product, so they control what it does. They should look into making seed that doesn’t germinate well in it’s second generation. This would give farmers a legitimate reason not to save seed, rather than just hitting them with this “i’ve got a patent, now pay up” balogne. Farmers wouldn’t save seed that is only going to give them a 30% germ. rate. Or if they do, they would still have to buy more to get a whole crop.

This is getting really long, so I’ll continue tommorrow. Until then, listen to Jeff Tucker’s excellent lecture on intellectual property:

Tucker – Evils of Intellectual Property:

Here are some of the things I took away from the movie, with commentary to follow for each:

• Big agriculture is in bed with the government way more than I thought. And I thought a lot.
• Modern technology has made food cheaper, but at a great cost to our health.
• Government subsidies have skewed the agricultural market way out of wack toward corn and soybean.
• Monsanto has sold it’s soul to the government for short term gain.
• Patents are just as evil as I thought.
• Organic products aren’t silly, leftist propaganda.  They are actually a good idea.
• If everyone could see where their meat comes from they would freak.

It’s become almost a given in our current system that big business is in bed with big government.  Indeed, the phrase “big business loves big government” couldn’t be more true when it comes to agriculture.  To be fair, it’s not all one-sided.  Government induces business to “play ball” just as much as business goes looking for government favors.  It’s all just disgusting.  The big agricultural conglomerates and meat processing companies have used the big hand of government to crush it’s competition through patents, increased regulations, land manipulation, etc.  Smaller producers – even the ones that are really good at what they do – can’t compete, because they don’t have the capital to fight the big boys in court.

This consolidation of companies has led to an ever increasing dependence on technology in order to keep up with demand.  It’s not like the old type of huge company, such as Standard Oil or U.S. Steel, that just flat out beat the competition by being better at what they did.  No, today it’s “win first through legislation and corruption and then figure out how to meet demand.”  So, meat processors do insane things like grow cows and poultry on so-called CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).  The animal’s natural food, like grass for cows, is not present.  They are fed corn as they stand knee-deep in their own feces.  It’s been known for a long time that when cows aren’t fed grass, they become very susceptible to disease, as well as skewing the bacteriological nature of their milk.  Basically, they turn into a petrie dish of all sorts of microscopic bad guys.  Combine that with the constant contact with their own feces and these CAFO’s become cess-pools for new strains of E.Coli and other acid-resistant bacteria.  That’s where your beef comes from folks.  Big Mac anyone?

I’ll follow up more tommorrow.  Netflix has this movie.  I encourage you to watch it.  As I said, you’ll have to ignore the green religion balogne and hard left government worship which is in most documentaries these days.  I also don’t agree with the strain of “government can solve all our problems” rhetoric that underlies much of the commentary, but that doesn’t mean the problems aren’t real ones.  It just means, as is always the case, that the government should get it’s nose out of producer/consumer interactions.  All in all, it’s simply a good idea to see where the stuff you put in your mouth comes from.

TSP – Seven Bad Pieces of Financial Advice:

Life today is not “better” than life was in 1945. It’s worse. Kids grow up in a plastic world where food magically appears on the dinner table every night. They have no connection to the production of what they consume. Paying somebody to put new brakes on your car is not “better” than “having” to do it yourself. Sure it’s messy and takes a couple of hours. But, when you’re done you have a pride in your work and a fatter wallet because of it. And your son has a new skill that he’ll go through life with. The same applies to food. Sending your kids outside to pick and string a bushel of pole beans and then throwing them right in a skillet for dinner 30 minutes later is teaching them a life lesson that a buying a can of Green Giant just can’t.

Instead of buying apples, vinegar and cider every time you go to the grocery store, how about buying some apple trees and planting them in your back yard. Within a couple of years you’ll be producing plenty of apples to eat. Then you can take a few bushels, chop them up and make your own cider to drink and to store. Then take all of the left over apple mash from making the cider and use it to make your own vinegar with a large bucket and some hay. None of that is hard and it all teaches wonderful life skills. Plus, after a few years of changing your thinking on this kind of thing you slowly wean yourself off of “the system.” You no longer have to run out on Christmas Eve and pick up a jug of cider for when the relatives come over. You just go down in the basement and grab some you made and stored.

I could go on and on, but I’d rather let Jack explain it to you. I’ve picked out three really, really good episodes that I think would be very much worth your while to listen to. These are good introductions to being preparedness minded:

TSP – Principle One of Modern Survival:

TSP – The Last Pure Form of Revolution:

TSP – 20 Simple Steps to Independence:

While you’re at it, subscribe to Jack’s RSS feed and follow his show. You’ll be glad you did.