Emergency 3-Ingredient Skillet Bread
When the bread is gone, the power is out, or you're down to the basics in the pantry, you can still make something warm and bread-like with flour, water and salt.
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- About ¾ cup water
- 1 tablespoon oil, butter, shortening, lard or bacon grease — optional
Directions
- Mix the flour and salt in a bowl.
- Slowly add water until the mixture forms a soft, workable dough. Add the optional fat if you have it.
- Knead with your hands for about 1–2 minutes.
- Divide into 6–8 pieces.
- Flatten each piece into a thin round, about ⅛–¼ inch thick. A rolling pin isn't necessary—your hands work just fine.
- Heat a cast-iron skillet over medium heat. The pan can be dry or very lightly greased.
- Cook each bread for about 1–2 minutes per side, until cooked through with browned spots.
- Stack the finished breads under a clean towel if you want them to remain softer and easier to fold.
Cooking Off Grid
No electricity? That's the point.
Cook these on a gas stove, outdoor grill, camp stove, woodstove, or cast-iron skillet over a campfire. When cooking over a fire, use a bed of hot coals rather than tall flames so the bread cooks instead of scorching.
The Bare-Pantry Version (half the recipe)
If you're down to almost nothing, use:
- 1 cup flour
- ⅓ to ½ cup water
- Pinch of salt
***This skillet bread is a huge WIN for me. I tossed together 1 cup of flour, and was able to make my flat bread in less than 5 minutes! Best of all, the bread was delicious. I Enjoyed a breakfast "taco" of scrambled eggs and the bread held things together beautifully. During a grid down, this is my top favorite bread to put together.
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| Half the recipe for Skillet Bread + added my optional 1 tsp oil |
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| Cooking stove top in iron skillet |
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| Took less than 5 minutes to mix, knead and cook bread |
When You're Out of Bread, You're Not Necessarily Out of Bread
One thing many of us learned during the COVID-19 pandemic was just how quickly ordinary foods could disappear from grocery-store shelves. Bread and baking staples were among the products affected by the sudden surge in at-home eating and baking.
It was a good reminder of something I've come to appreciate about preparedness:
Knowing how to make food can be just as important as storing food.
Bread Has Been Survival Food for Thousands of Years
There is nothing particularly modern about making bread this way.
Archaeologists have found bread-like remains at a hunter-gatherer site in what is now Jordan dating back about 14,400 years—thousands of years before agriculture became established. Researchers believe some of those early breads were made from ground wild grains and other plants, mixed with water and cooked on a hot surface or in the ashes of a fire.
That's about as basic as cooking gets:
Grain. Water. Heat. Food.
My travels have also made me realize just how important bread remains in everyday life around the world.
Cairo, Egypt
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| Photo of bread from the roadside in Cairo - March 2010 |
While traveling in Cairo, I photographed simple round breads being sold along the street. Egypt has a long bread tradition, including aish baladi, the country's familiar everyday flatbread.
Jerusalem
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| Street vender selling fresh bread in Jerusalem - March 2010 |
In Jerusalem, I photographed a vendor selling stacks of sesame bread from a street cart. The bread appears to be ka'ak al-Quds, commonly called Jerusalem sesame bread or a Jerusalem bagel.
It's a yeasted, baked bread rather than our emergency skillet bread, but once again bread was inexpensive, portable everyday food.
Pita in Israel
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| Restaurant in Eilat, Israel - March 2010 |
At meals in Israel, we ate pita with hummus, vegetables, meat and other foods.
Pita demonstrates just how useful a simple bread can be. Tear it apart for dipping, stuff it with food, or use it to hold an entire meal.
Simit in Istanbul
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| Street vendor in Istanbul - October, 2017 |
And in Istanbul, Turkey, I photographed carts piled high with simit, the distinctive sesame-covered ring bread that has been part of Istanbul's street-food culture for centuries.
Simit requires more ingredients and preparation than our emergency flatbread, but the lesson is the same: bread is simple, portable food that people around the world have adapted to their own ingredients and cooking traditions.
What Can I Do With Emergency Skillet Bread?
Make it thin and flexible and use it almost like a tortilla. Fill it with beans and rice, scrambled eggs, potatoes, leftover meat, cheese or vegetables and roll it into a burrito-style meal.
Use two smaller pieces for a sandwich, or fold one around tuna, peanut butter and jelly, cheese, eggs or whatever else you have.
Tear it into pieces and eat it alongside beans, soup, chili or stew. Use it for dipping. Spread it with butter, honey, jam or molasses. Sprinkle a warm piece with cinnamon and sugar for something sweet.
You can even use a piece as the base for a quick skillet pizza if you happen to have sauce and cheese.
That's what makes this such a useful preparedness recipe. The bread becomes whatever the meal needs it to be.
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| Experimenting with skillet bread. Add spices, top with cheese... |
Instant Bread!
Whether the power is out, the stores are picked over, you're cooking outdoors, or you've simply run out of bread before grocery day, this is one of those recipes worth knowing by heart.
Because when supplies are limited, simple food skills give us options.
And sometimes a warm piece of homemade bread can make an emergency meal feel a whole lot more like a regular meal.
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