Yeast is a Many Splendored Thing

Yeast can do a lot of good things. When settlers headed west, they left the conveniences behind, but they still brought yeast. How? In the form of sour dough starters. Here is a photo of mine in the mason jar. You take one teaspoon of yeast, one and a half cup of warm water and two cups of four. Mix well, and place in jar. Let set overnight to work, then put it in the frig. When you take some to use for leavening (yeast breads) replace with flour and water. This way you keep the yeast working. You can double this recipe if your family is larger. There's only two here, so this was enough for us.

Its been mighty hot and I wanted pizza. I make my own dough, but didn't want to fire up the oven. Just too much heat. So, taking my dough, I oiled the cast iron skillet, pressed the dough into it, and topped it with the normal stuff.


I like to use spaghetti sauce to speed up the pizza process. Then some chopped green onions, mushrooms, black olives. Put a decent lid on this, and set on a low flame. It takes very little heat to cook this deep dish pizza.


We only ate half because its pretty filling. A side of salad, a cold beer, and you have a good meal.


I love cooking with this cast iron skillet because it is so cost effective, holds the heat well and evenly.

Skills like utilizing yeast are worth learning as a survivalist. If things get bad, we won't have store bought bread, or baking powder. Yeast is something we can keep on hand by utilizing this sourdough starter.