One common food storage program (particularly among Mormons) involves just four basic commodities: wheat, powdered milk, honey and salt. While this might not sound very exciting, it's enough to keep body and soul together, and as such is of special interest not only to people interested in a food reserve, but to those who grow their own wheat.

In her 1969 book Passport to Survival, (Bookcraft Inc, Salt Lake City, Utah) Esther Dickey lists recipes for over a hundred ways to use these four basic foods! We're not talking about recipes for bread and other baked goods, of which there are probably thousands. No, we're talking about steamed wheat, bulgur wheat, sprouts, "cereals without boxtops," mock walnut meats, wheat thins, teas, soups, and even desserts and candies!

She makes chow mein with gluten cubes (see page 44), stew broth (also made from wheat, although you could use bouillon cubes thickened with gluten water) and wheat sprouts (see page 56).

Emergency stew consists of gluten cubes, stew broth, and noodles or mock tater tots (made with 1/4 cup dry milk, 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1 cup of thick starch left over from making gluten. Combine all ingredients, drop mixture from a teaspoon onto a cookie sheet, and bake until brown.)

Or how about mock chicken legs? This is made with a taco filling —made from wheat sprouts, steamed wheat, cooked gluten and fine crumbs, ground and mixed—shaped into small rolls. Roll in crumbs, insert a toothpick in the small end, and heat in a casserole.

Wheat flakes: Make a thin batter of 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of water (or more), and 1 teaspoon salt. Mix lightly with a spoon, but do not overbeat. Pour onto a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Break into bite-size pieces. Add walnut flavoring to melted butter, stir in wheat flakes, and you have mock walnut meats.

And that's hardly a start. Imagine what you can do with even a few additional ingredients... or with meat, eggs, milk and vegetables from your homestead! If you're concerned about storing food and can't afford the expensive freeze-dried prepared products, by all means stock up on — and learn to use — the basic four. (And if you can find a copy of this 30-year-old book in a used book store, by all means, grab it quick!)

Pasta

Pasta is so easy to make — and the fresh product is so superior to the aged store-shelf kind — that in recent years even yuppies who would be aghast at the idea of homesteading have been making their own. They have also made pasta machines popular kitchen appliances.

Homesteaders on a budget can do just as well.

Pasta dough is nothing more than flour and eggs. Start with about 11/3 cups flour and two large eggs: add a bit more flour if needed, but don't overdo it. The dough should be somewhat sticky, but not moist.

Most people add a small amount of salt (1/4 teaspoon) and 2 teaspoons of olive (or other) oil, but these are neither traditional nor necessary.

Mound the flour on your kneading surface, make a well in the center, and break the eggs into it. Gradually mix the flour from the edges in toward the center with a fork, and mix it lightly. Let it rest for a few minutes while the flour absorbs the egg. Then knead it for 6-8 minutes or until the dough is smooth and silky. Cover the dough with a damp towel and let it rest another 10-30 minutes to make it easier to roll out.

Then lightly dust your breadboard and hands with flour — again, don't overdo it, even if the dough seems somewhat damp — and flatten it out with your hands. Then roll it out with a rolling pin, from the center to the edges. Work quickly so the dough doesn't dry out. Try for a circle about 24 inches in diameter or a square about 21 inches on a side. (Lasagna or ravioli can be a little bit thicker than long flat noodles like fettuccine or spaghetti... about the thickness of a dime.)

Let the rolled-out dough rest, uncovered, just long enough for it to begin to dry without the edges becoming brittle, about 10 minutes with average humidity.

To make flat noodles (the easiest kind), lightly dust the thin sheet with flour, loosely roll it up, and cut it in the thickness you want, with a sharp knife.

You don't have to roll the dough, which can sometimes be difficult. You can just cut strips of the desired width. Although these are likely to be wavy, some people appreciate the "hand-made" look.

Let the noodles dry for 30 minutes on a lightly floured towel, or on a pasta rack. (This can be a clothes rack, or even a broom handle propped between two chairs.) If you're going to store them for later use, let them dry completely.

To cook, bring three quarts of water to a boil. Add 2 teaspoons of salt. Add the pasta, all at once. Stir just enough to keep it from sticking together. Bring the water back to a boil then cook the pasta at a light boil until al dente, or just firm to the bite. Fresh homemade pasta cooks faster than dried, and thin noodles may take only 2-3 minutes.

Once you master this simple recipe, you can move on to lasgna, ravioli, cannelloni, manicotti, tortellini — and spinach, beet, tomato or pesto flavored pasta — and with the dozens of different fillings and sauces you could have easy-to-make homemade pasta for weeks without duplication. (If you need a cookbook for these, try The King Arthur 200th Anniversary Cookbook mentioned on page 41.)

Gluten

Gluten is the mixture of plant proteins in wheat that makes bread rise. It is also an easily made meat substitute — which actually has more essential amino acids than beef.

To make it, mix 7 cups of fresh-ground wheat flour and 2 cups of cold water. Make it into a ball and then work the daylights out of it: knead it, pound it, stretch it, beat it, treat it rough! It will take hard physical labor for at least 10 minutes to combine the gliadin and glutenin in the flour to develop good rubber-like gluten.

The next step is separating the water-soluble starch from the non-soluble gluten. To do this, let the ball of dough sit, covered with cold water, for about an hour. Discard that water and pour hot water over the ball. Work it with your hands to wash out the starch. Pour off this starch water, but save it. (In a survival situation, according to Esther Dickey, it has dozens of uses, not only in such foods as soups and gravies and mixing dry milk or making other drinks, but it will also soften your hands [or your baby], make a paste, starch your clothes or paper your walls. Use it to mop your floor and it serves as a substitute for floor wax. Put it on the garden but do not put it in your septic system. To obtain the starch, let the milky gluten water stand until the starch settles. Pour off the clear water, and cook what's left to the desired consistency.)

Add more hot water and repeat, until the water remains clear.

This will yield about 11/2 cups of ready-to-use gluten.

Roll the gluten into small "sausages," bake until brown, cool, and simmer in salted water for 1-3 hours. To make patties, put the gluten into small juice cans and bake at 350 degrees for about 11/2 hours. Slice, and simmer as above. Or simply roll or stretch the gluten paper-thin and bake on a cookie sheet until it's browned, cool, cut into small pieces, and simmer.

Bulgur

Bulgur is a staple in parts of the Middle East, and has become so familiar to adventurous American diners that it's available in many supermarkets. But even those who appreciate bulgur's subtle nutty flavor probably don't know how easy it is to make.

Boil wheat berries in twice their volume of water for 45 minutes, or until the grain is just tender. Drain, saving the liquid for soup stock. Spread the wheat on cookie sheets and dry at 250 degrees, stirring occasionally. The kernels should be completely dry in 45-60 minutes. Grind coarsely. Bulgur can be stored in tightly closed containers.

Porridge

Many years ago we used a hand grain mill that didn't grind flour as finely as we wanted for bread. There were bits of hard, cracked wheat pieces in the finished loaves. We later learned that if such wheat is mixed into the water and yeast and left to stand overnight, not only does the cracked wheat become soft: it adds an interesting nutty texture to the bread.

But before that discovery, we sifted the poorly-ground flour. The larger pieces, boiled in water until tender, made an excellent breakfast cereal.

Of course, you can intentionally crack wheat berries by setting the grain mill on coarse grind, to make this delicious cereal. And some people like the chewy texture of whole wheat berries, although they can take 2-3 hours to cook.

Another method is to soak 1 cup of wheat in 2 cups of water 8-10 hours. Drain the water and add enough to make two cups. Add a teaspoon of salt and the soaked wheat and bring to a boil. Pour into a preheated thermos, close tightly, and lay it on its side overnight.

(This is a homesteader's version of an instant breakfast — and it only takes 16-20 hours!)

Chapati

This is an unleavened whole wheat bread popular in India.

Mix 21/2 cups flour and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Add about 1 cup of water, slowly, to make a soft dough. Knead for about 5 minutes, until the dough is smooth. Roll out golfball-size pieces as thin as possible. Cook on a hot, lightly greased griddle until blistered, then turn and bake other side. Chapatis should be lightly brown and crisp. Serve hot with butter.

Wild yeast

Yeast is a single-celled fungus that's in the air everywhere. While special kinds are used for commercial baking yeast, you can make your own.

Mix 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of warm water and 2 teaspoons of honey. Put this in an uncovered crock or bottle and let stand in a warm room for five days. Stir it several times a day to introduce air into the batter, and it will ferment.

Since you won't know what kind of spores started your yeast, you'll have to experiment a bit to learn how much to use in baking for the results you want, but even recipes calling for commercial yeast can vary by 100% or more.

After using some of the yeast, replace the amount used by adding flour and potato water in equal proportions.

Yeast extender

For a little "less wild" yeast, cook three medium potatoes in 11/4 cups water until tender. Mix in blender, adding 1/4 cup honey, 1-1/2 teaspoons salt and enough cold water to make 31/4 cups of liquid. Cool to lukewarm and add 1 teaspoon of dry yeast in 1 cup of lukewarm water. Let stand overnight, stir, and use in any recipe calling for yeast.

To start another batch, follow the same recipe, but instead of using dry yeast use 1 cup of the homemade liquid yeast.

If you bake regularly, you can keep this going indefinitely, and you'll never have to buy yeast.

Meat from wheat!

Gluten is fascinating stuff!

The first step in making "meat" from wheat is making gluten. Stretching it is part of the process.

When first extracted from whole wheat flour (see main article for the method), it's a stringy unappetizing mass. But with a little more processing, it can become sausage, or stew meat, or even veal cutlets! All "fake," of course, but still an interesting variation on the breads, cakes, pies and cookies more commonly associated with wheat. And if it should become necessary to live on "the fab four" for any length of time, gluten is definitely something you'll want to know about.

The raw gluten, shown above, was rolled into a "sausage" and sliced into small pieces. These were placed on a baking sheet and baked at 350 degrees F. until they started to brown. They could have been made smaller, but we cut them into smaller pieces later, and used them in soups and stews and on pizza.

Some of the gluten was molded into large pieces, the size of a chop or cutlet, and simmered in water for about 30 minutes. Pan browned, seasoned, and simmered in a gravy made with a boullion cube — and served with homegrown potatoes and green beans — it made a very satisfying and interesting meal.