Lately, I have really enjoyed making bread.  Making your own bread is a great way to save money.  In fact, I made a goal this year to make all my sandwich bread from scratch, and learn how to make other breads as well.  As I was researching breads online, I stumbled upon this recipe for something called Depression Era Bread.

What is Depression Era Cooking?

During the Great Depression, many families had to cook with basic ingredients and learn to live with less.  One woman, now 94 years old, decided to share the things she learned during that time with people today.  Her name is Clara, and she shares recipes her mother made for her family during that time in an online cooking class.  The videos can be found on YouTube.  She is a very funny lady and shares lots of stories from the time.  She said, “Everything was really bad, but the food was good.”  People online seem to really enjoy her wealth of information, as many families are struggling with food budgets in our era today.  She has become so popular that she has put her information in a book called “Clara’s Kitchen”.

Depression Era Bread Recipe

You can make Clara’s bread in your own home with only 3 ingredients, but the recipe I am using has 4 ingredients because I added salt.  Here is the recipe I used based on her recipe and below you will find her video for making the bread.

Depression Era Bread

5 lb bag All- purpose flour

5 TBS Yeast (Clara used cake type yeast but I used Rapid-Rise yeast)

6 Tsp Salt (optional, but I think it added flavor to the bread)

6 cups warm water (more or less depending on your dough)

Pour flour in a large bowl. (I used a Tupperware “That’s A Bowl”.)  Make a well in the center of the flour.  Add yeast to well and then add enough of the water to the well to dissolve the yeast (you can use your hands).  After yeast is dissolved start adding more water and mixing in flour until you form a dough.   Knead dough in the bowl for a bit.  Let the dough rise in a warm place with a towel loosely covering the top.  After it has risen double in size, punch down the dough and divide it up into 7 loaves.   Shape the dough loaves and put in loaf pans.  I did not have 7 pans so I used a cookie sheet and the loaves came out just as nice as the ones in the bread pans.  I served with beef stew.  I find that it really goes well with soups, and I even made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with it.

Cost of Depression Era Bread

 Flour : $1.50 (I got on sale during Christmas and stocked up.)

Yeast :  about $1.00

Salt :  pennies . . .

Water: pennies…

So for about $2.50 I made 7 loaves of bread.  That’s cheaper than the cost of some single loaves from the grocery store.

Each loaf costs about $0.36, depending on the ingredients you use.

Taste of the Bread

 The bread was really good.  It was more of a rustic type of bread, kind of like French bread, and worked well with hot foods.  My family really enjoyed this bread.  I also gave several of the loaves away as gifts.  What a neat inexpensive gift.  They all raved about it as well.  So, why not give it a try and get a little taste of history for yourself.