"Canned Bread & Butter," or How My View of Food Storage Has Changed Drastically.

Before last week, my idea of food storage was cans of beans, pillowcases of raw grains, and the occasional Twinkie for dessert. Nasty. Thanks to Grandma Hendrixson, my future food storage will actually be edible-- and even moreso, enjoyable and dare I say, delightful!

I give you,

How to can bread and butter!

Bread: You can use either the store bought dough, or make your own. When the dough is made, spray a tall Mason jar with Pam, making sure all surfaces are covered. Put the dough inside the jar, filling it about half way up, let rise, then put the jar (uncovered) in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.

While it's baking, sterilize the tops of the jars by boiling them in a saucepan of water (you can see the saucepan in the picture above). When the bread is baked, take it out, cut off any muffin-top, and seal it with the sterilized top. Done! Soon you will hear the "ping!" of the top sealing.

Butter: First, sterilize the jars (without lids) in a 250 degree oven for about 45 minutes. Sterilize the lids in boiling water (see above).

Put 2 sticks of butter in a glass measuring cup and microwave until it's melted. Pour the melted butter in a jar and seal it. Keep melting butter and putting it in jars until you are done filling jars.

While the jars are cooling, make sure you are continuously shaking the jars until the butter hardens. You want the white stuff at the bottom of the jars to be mixed throughout the butter (see above). If there's still that separation when the butter hardens, you'll want to stick the jars in warm water to re-melt the contents, then keep shaking to mix everything together.

There you have it! Canned bread and butter. The butter, we know, lasts at least 5 years. The bread-- we're not sure. No one's ever kept it in storage long enough to find out. I guess it's just that good!

P.S. Neither bread nor butter need to be refrigerated. They will keep just fine on the shelf until opened.


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