Wild Breads, Part Two - How to make great tasting and nutritious breads from the edible plants in your backyard.

A.k.a.: Wild Breads Two, the Quest for More Money…… Wait … What… Oh yeah, I’m not getting paid for this.  Forgot that for a second.  Well in that case, I think I’ll go get a drink, then see if there is any ice cream. I mean, what the heck, I’m not on the clock.

Remember, it is up to you to properly identify the plant in question. I have chosen what I think are easy plants that most everyone should know.  I cannot and will not identify it for you in this blog.  I will help you along on this, but the job of being sure you’ve got the right plant rest squarely on your shoulders. (There wasn't any ice cream.  There's never any ice cream. It was supposed to be under the bag of frozen rats. But my significant other must've eaten it.  I can't, however, complain because, after all, that's my bag of frozen rats in our freezer.  And she puts up with that.  If I was a normal person and had to put up with me, I think I'd shoot me.)

Dandelion flour

If you don’t know what a dandelion looks like, either A: look it up; or B: give up, go back inside “where it’s safe” and  tweet about how much you love the outdoors and how you think we should be as in touch with nature as you are.

The entire dandelion plant is edible and quite nutritious.  Although the leaves can be bitter, they are a good addition to a salad.  But I wouldn’t try a salad of just dandelion leaves, although it would be hard to be worse than iceberg lettuce.  I mean, hey, at least it would have some taste.  The flowers are actually semi –sweet, and that’s what we will be using here. 

When you pick your flowers, be sure to leave as much of the stem behind as possible.  You will fail at this. But don't worry.  After they've been dried, you can pick out the now rock-hard pieces of stem.  There is a green cup at the base of the flower that the petals grow from.  Don’t worry about taking it with the flowers.  I don’t.

Spread the flowers out on a baking sheet and dry them in the oven.  This is the hardest part for me because every fiber in my being wants to batter and fry the flowers.  If you haven’t tried it, you can’t know. If you have tried it, you know how I feel.  Remember, dried flowers equal flour.  Not quite dry flowers equal a pasty mess.

Now grind the flowers into flour.  (Love saying that, and that's coming from a guy who managed to use "peedrinking numbskull" in the literal sense in a previous post.)  You can use a mortar and pestle, grinder, heck you can use hammers and rocks to grind the flowers.  But again, choose your rock well and go easy there, Grog.  It can make your flour gritty.  (Whoa. Two "wild breads one" references in one paragraph.  Okay, no more.)

Uh……..TA DAAAAAAA! I have, to at this point, admit that I haven’t tried dandelion flower , which by going ahead and posting this, I’m breaking a rule of mine.  However, having eaten many a dandelion and made, at this point, quite a bit of flour, I’m confident it will be good.  I have about half as much flour as I need to make a loaf of bread.  I was planning to pick more flowers and grind them, but instead I blew my back out rebuilding a magnetron.  Why is it that old crappy small appliances lasted for decades, yet new crappy small appliances seemed only last a few months?  I don't know, maybe it's because they want to buy a new one. I say, FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BE! Fix your broken stuff!  Let's send a message to these manufacturers of foreign-made, domestically assembled, overpriced, under-engineered kitchen gadgets!  Don't fall into their trap!  Save your hard-earned money, have a little fun, and learn something in the process. After all, it's already broken.  What have you got to lose?  (Yes, that was coffee I got to drink. Why do you ask?)  I plan to finish the flour and make bread as soon as I can.

Clover flour

Now this one I have done many times. Clover flour has a sweet, but subtle vanilla taste.  In my opinion, it tastes better than the "imitation, or more accurately abomination" vanilla and more like the real thing.  But wait, that's not even the best part.  The best part is that it's not made from paper mill waste runoff.  Seriously, that's what "imitation vanilla" is made from.

Again, the whole clover is edible raw, but we will be harvesting just the flowers, because we like flowers.  They make us feel pretty inside.

 

Here goes the recipe, quick and dirty like a waitress at… You know what?  That's just too easy, and there might be kids listening. So I'll just leave that one alone.  Pick the flowers.  Dry the flowers.  Grind the flowers into flour.

Sounds just like the first recipe, doesn’t it?  That’s because it is.  Gonna let you in on a little secret.  Anything that is edible, which you can dry and grind into a powder, can be used as flour.  From wheat grains, to clovers, to locust (Yes, you read right.  People make locust flour.  Not saying I wouldn't try it.  It's just that I really don't want to.), anything can be made into flour.  Heck, if you could dry it enough, I’ll bet you could make flour from leftover bacon.  Bacon bread.   There are no words, no words in the English language, to describe that level of awesome.

With that in mind, here are some wild edible plants to try.

Plantain: the whole plant is edible, but for taste stick to the young leaves.

 Lambsquarters: use the leaves or the seeds.

Daisies: I’d stick with the flowers.

Nettles:  use the young leaves, but watch out for the stinging mature leaves, which you can eat if you get the spikey thingies off.

And so ends "Wild Breads, Part Two," a.k.a. Revenge of the Wild Breads, a.k.a. Wild Breads Two: the Quest for More Money. I hope this has helped teach you the basic idea of making breads from edible wild plants. That said, in the fall I may, perhaps, do a third installment "Wild Breads, Part Three" a.k.a. the Wild Breads Strike Back. Until then, I urge you to try making your own wild bread.  After all, even if you decide you don't like the bread you made, at least you learned something.  And that is a powerful thing.