Pone Bread As A Survival Food

One of the things that has always frustrated my efforts as a Prepper has been the conundrum of making my own bread. Half of you reading this are probably laughing at me right now, because you've likely been grinding your own flour and baking your own bread for who knows how long, but it has always seemed to my mind like there was a glaring problem with that type of plan. I've always wondered what was going to happen if we were to find ourselves in the midst of a societal collapse where it was impossible to obtain needed materials for such a complicated process, namely yeast. As a result, I have never fully committed to the idea of stockpiling wheat. Rather, I've been looking for a process that would allow for the approximation of bread making without the use of yeast or self-rising flours.

I have not been entirely disappointed in the search. One thing I know for sure is possible to make, because it was made and enjoyed for centuries by people in Scotland and Ireland (both of which represent my heritage) as well as Wales, was Bannock bread made from oats – essentially, just ground oats and water baked into a loaf by the fire. I also discovered that if I used pancake mix I could make something that very closely resembled cornbread in a pan, then simply cut it out in squares. As of now, however, I have officially found my favorite option, and it would come – ironically – from an old Hillbilly Appalachian tradition that was borrowed from the Native Americans: pone bread.

You're probably still laughing at me, because I'm probably leaps and bounds behind others out there who have been making and enjoying this for years. My mother even knew it immediately from her childhood and told me that it was sometimes called"pony bread," which I suspect is just because of a mispronunciation due to the letter"e" at the end of "pone" being combined with some old timer who was probably only educated to the sixth grade. Either way, I made some recently and thought I would share the experience with you.

Please understand that, although there are probably thousands of different, elaborate recipes online, my specific purpose in all of this has been to come up with a bread-type food that could be made very simply by people living in an emergency situation and without elaborate ways to prepare their food. So, please understand that what I'm about to describe to you is an extremely paired-down and plain recipe. The only extravagance I used was to crush up some peanuts in the mix, which serve as the analog for walnuts or chestnuts that you or I could easily gather from the wild. Also, I used butter to fry the whole mess, rather than cooking oil, as an approximation of using melted animal fat procured during a hunt.

One quarter of a cup of crushed peanuts in a bowl, which turned out to be completely superfluous. You could barely taste them at all, and when I make this again I'm pretty sure I won't be using them. I'm sure that maybe they added a little oil to the mixture and some calories/carbohydrates, but they weren't needed.

One cup of flour and some salt. Remember, this was just meant to be a small test batch. It would be easy enough to scale the recipe up to feed more people if needed. I didn't measure the salt, but rather simply shook a bunch in from the shaker. Couldn't have been more than maybe one teaspoon. You'll notice this is typical self-rising flour, because that's what I had on hand, but this process would work just as well with flour ground directly from wheat. You're going to be frying it, rather than baking, so the "rising"doesn't matter and you don't need to use any yeast or baking powder.

Added a third of a cup of water, which wasn't quite enough but another third of a cup would've been far too much. Dribbled maybe another tablespoon of water above the third of a cup that was already in it, because I wanted it to be thicker, rather than pourable like pancakes.

Unnecessary peanuts mixed-in.  ----->

Mixed and ready for frying as the butter melts

Another mistake I made, not really being a cook, was that I failed to make note of how long this took to get done. All I can say is continue to flip it until it is done all the way through without being burnt on either side.




And, the end result…

It came out very much like a big flat, fluffy biscuit. I simply put a little extra butter on top and ate it warm right off the stove, and it was very filling. Mind you, the only absolutely necessary ingredients were flour, water, and something to fry it in. I think it would've turned out much the same without the peanuts or the minuscule amount of salt I added. In a pinch, you could make this in a skillet over a fire built in an old coffee can or on a flat rock next to a campfire, and you would get essentially the exact meal I produced here. So, this proves that it does not require an elaborate recipe or even a very well-stocked kitchen in order to make a bread-type meal that is very satisfying. I, for one, am very happy with this, and may post about it again later as I experiment with adding honey, berries, etc. somewhere down the line.

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