Make a Wonder Bag and Bake Bread

welcome to rosebud homestead today weare going to make our own the Wonder bagand we’re going to make some bread in itand so we have a lot to do so we betterget started in just a moment[Music]over the past couple of months I’ve beendoing quite a bit of research on theconcept of wonder bags I’ve even had acouple of our subscribers make commentsabout the origin and they wereabsolutely right the origin of thesewonder bags it did not just occur inrecent years this is a very old old ideain fact in this country it first startedas what was known then as a hay boxwhere they would just take a wooden boxfill it with hay or straw put a pan downin with ingredients on the inside fillit with straw cover it over and thenjust let it sit until the ingredientswere done so if we think about the basicprinciples the scientific principlesbehind what a wonder bag does it’s justall about insulation and keeping thetemperature from cooling down so thereare lots of ways that we can do thatthis Wonder bag I know that some of youhave seen the video that we presentedlast week on how we use this to makesome soup and this one is lovelydesigned and so this has little pocketsof styrofoam beads and these are thestyrofoam beads I felt like if this onehad styrofoam beads that I was alsogoing to use styrofoam beads I can tellyou right now I don’t think I will everdo that again I will share with you whythat is the case you’ll probably seesome of that action right in this videobut this is a lovely lovely design andthe only drawback to this one is itssize becausewhatever you are whatever pen you areusing to fit down inside has to fitinside and as you can see this one doesnot is not very large I was able to makebread in this one last week just as atrial one run but the only thing thatwould fit in the pan that I use for thisis pipe size jars so we had these littletiny loaves of bread that werepint-sized loaves of bread they wereactually pretty cute and they made greattoast so I’ve decided that I wanted tomake a larger one if we think about theprinciples behind this they don’t allhave to be designed exactly like this ofcourse I’m going to set this one asidebecause the idea is we just want anenclosed space that is insulated thatwill keep a pen nice and insulated so Ijust decide to experiment on that my ownand I know that there are lots ofpatterns out there for wonder bags butI’ve been sewing for so many years thatI really don’t need a pattern I reallylike to use reuse refurbish things thatI already have on hand so I had this oldtwin sheet that I’ve had on our shelffor years we don’t even have a twin bedanymore and so I used it to make thiskind of a design a wonder bag or wonderbox whatever we want to call it you knowthe design does not have to be all inone piece like that one is with thesecond piece for a lid you can have asmany pieces as you want you could evenstuff feather pillows around it to keepit well insulated we all know that downis down goose down is a very greatinsulator but I used this the styrofoambeads and so this is a pillowcase so ifyou have two or three old pillowcasesand wanna fill those with some kind of afilling that would insulate then do itso I cut that both the top the bottomend off so that I could sew this Centerseam and then fill from both sides nowwhy do we put seams anywaywhy don’t we just do it like this wellthe reason is because these little ballslook at this this would not beinsulating at all but and this is toomuch insulation the suggestions ofeverything that I read in my phone theregoes some more of the beads any littleBreda sense them scattering and so I wasthinking about the purpose that I wantedfor each piece now this piece is goingto go on the bottom this is what thatthe perón will sit on and thesuggestions from my research are thatyou should have at least a good twoinches of beads for the best insulationand so knowing that this one was justfor the light flat I didn’t put anycross seams in that at allhowever this one is going to go over thetop and down the side and so I wantedtwo things the seam here is so that itwill easily fold right in that placethis seams here and here are to keep thebeads from migrating so much that Idon’t have insulation where I need itnow the trick to doing these is to notpack the insulation so tight that youdon’t have movement no this is packedtighter than the one I’m going to showyou in just a minute because it is onlygoing to just go in two planes top sideand so these could have more in in andbe a little bit stiffer so I’m going toset this one aside and show you this onenow this one was just cut a long pieceout of that sheet and then I have sewnit and it is what is going to go aroundthe pot now and I made this one firstand I made it in a smaller pan and waitfor to fit a smaller pan and then when Idecided to use a larger pan there is nowa gap where it fits around the pan oopsbut it doesn’t go all the way so that’swhy I made that other piece so that itgoes on theup and down the side so I’ve gotcoverage and so this is versatile I canuse it with several different sized potsbut we had quite a time getting thisfilled and I’ll tell you it took both ofus and I did use my canning funnel totry to get these little beads down in Ihave left the top side for ourdemonstration today so actually what Iwant to do over here and I’m going toflop this up like this and I’m going toget us this Clorox bottle and put hereright behind it so maybe these willstand up and I can show you now theseare not all the way full the bottomsections of these have only about whenit’s out flat about two inches becausethey need to curve and they need to forman arc and if you get too many in herethey’re stiff and they won’t Bend at allso that’s why these are quite loose inhere now these have too little in hereso I left this last bit for us to try todo on camera so I’m going to prop thisup and wish me luck to demonstrate thisso here’s what we’re going to do I’vegot pins here I’m going to take them outand trying to do this without Jim he wasa great help so I have the beads in justa picture like this I want to make nobreezes and then I’m just going to dumpthese inthese things I think they spontaneouslygerminate reproduce at night let’s afterwe cleaned them up we came out the nextday and there were still some more onthe floor okay so I’m trying to get thefeel for this if this is about enoughand yes it is because I’m going to needto turn some downwe also learned to keep this top pinnedotherwise they just go sailing so I’mgoing to pin this one and then I willopen the next section and we’ll try toget those filled two pins to come outand again no breezes I filled thispicture outside and there’s now quite afew heading over to the neighbor’s houseon the wind that’s out there today theyare going to wonder where those camefromthese are tricky to work with and theyjust get all over the place two inchestwo inches I think that’s probably aboutrightI have been thinking about alternativesto these beads and I think probablyquilt batting might work a blanket wouldnot be as good but if it has that lufflofting of the hay I guess it’s I don’tknow what kind of material it is thatthey make quilt batting out up I’ve usedit hundreds of times over my lifetime Idon’t even know what it’s made of lookskind of like angel hair old-fashionedangel hair but of course it isn’tbecause that was spun and glass okay sothis is way low and I bet you could Ibet you could use quilt batting as wellyou just need something that is really agood insulator all right this one is alittle thinner than the others it’sgoing to be a little trickier nobodybreathe this the static electricity thatgets on these things they really do moveas if they are alive when you’re tryingto chase them down or round on thecounter and I was spilling someand let’s see thatlet’s put on one moreand as we as I was sewing these up theother day when we were making this thereis just no way to avoid those littlestyrofoam beads from getting underneaththe needle on the sewing machine and soyou go over these little bumps all thetime so it’s quite an excitingexperience sewing these upokay this is just right so I’m going totake this over to the sewing machinequickly so that theme and then I will beright back and we’ll be ready to startthe bread oh this just took me aboutfive minutes to do we had a few escapeesI can tell you they’re all over thefloor over therebut this is now ready before we getstarted on the bread I do want to showyou this bag of styrofoam beads that Iuse for the Wonder bag this is called abean bag refill I bought it on Amazonit’s a Big Joe and it was about $20let’s get started on the bread so thisis my regular bread well it’s theartisan bread it’s this bread and you’veseen those in many of our videos I’msure I feature these in a lot of thepictures that we do and they’re madethey rise in these little baskets sothis is a pre ferment coat foolish Imake a double batch of this everySaturday which makes four baskets arefour of these lows so today what I’mgoing to do is split this in half andI’m going to make one that fits in thebasket and then I’m going to cut theother side in half and fit those down inthese two these are called bain mariepans right here and these are the japansthat you see down in the in salad bowlthat hold the sliced olives and whateverelse is in here and so these are goingto be great for making bread you canalso use forty six ounce juice cans umyou need something with fairly straightsides so the bread can come out easily Iwas able to use pint jars in myexperimentmint in my experimenting because theyhave straight sides as well but one ofthe troubles with the 46th ounce juicecans that pineapple juice come in andthat sort of thing is that they rustquite easily and you would have toreplace them now I started this breadlast night it takes very very littleyeast which and it ferments all nightlong which is great and you can use formaking bread andWonderbag any bread recipe that youwould like to use use your favorite useone that you are familiar with this isone that right now I am very familiarwith and so this takes a little bit of adifferent process right here for aregular recipe what you would want to dois make sure that you let it rise onceand then instead of allowing it to risethe second time that’s when you wouldput it in here so I’m just going to takemy little bench knife and cut this inhalf then I’m going to set this asidefor these and I’m just going to quicklydo this one for this basket okay we’regoing to set this aside but rise itsecond time and now we’re going to workwith these okay so first thing I’m goingto need to do is to lightly oil theinside of these to take my spray oilcooking spray it’s calledand just make sure that everything iswell as afraid okay and then once againI’m gonna take this and cut it in halfbecause these will be a little bitsmaller than my regular lobes are andthese don’t even need to be worked witha lot I’m just gonna kind of fold themunder and then I’m just gonna drop themdown inside other people don’t even dothat much work they just drop theminside I kind of like to fold in thetail endsall right this is what these look likeMedusa coils okay these are now ready togo and when you looked inside younoticed that the bread dough wasprobably just a little bit less thanhalf and that’s about exactly where wewant it is a little bit less than halfuncut I covered it with foil to helpkeep the temperature a little bit moreconstant in there now when I let theserise in the basket it takes about anhour and a half so we don’t have to dothat with these this is going to be adifferent style of bread same dough butdifferent style of bread and they’regoing to be going in this pan and so I’mgoing to just set them down in the panyou can see how they look there and thenI’m going to put hot water in the bottomof the pan about three inches high andthis is what you will do with your ownrecipe of bread as well and so afterthere’s about three inches in the bottomI’m going to put the lid on and we’rejust going to leave it just exactly likethis until they have risen until they’reare about double and this would be thesame procedure for any recipe of breadyou can use any recipe of bread here sowe’re going to stop the video now whilethis Rises and thenwe’ll come back when we’re ready tostart the processing and I think you’regoing to be really surprised about whatthe next step is so we’ll see you in abit we’re ready for the next step andbefore we get there I want to runthrough a couple of things first becausethe process now is going to deviategreatly from how we make this bread solet’s take a look at this bread for justa minute this is a loaf that we got outfor breakfast this morning when my sonand what his wife were here so we’veeaten half of it but notice thebeautiful crust on this and how nice andbrown this is this takes a lot of energyto get it here right now I have my ovenpreheating to 460 degrees in that ovenour two dutch ovens and they have to getsuper super hot on the inside too andthen we cook this bread we bake thisbread that other three loaves that Ihave over there waiting we will makethose in the oven and it just takes anamazing amount of energy now thedifference between this bread and thisbread is that the amount of energy isgoing to be substantially reducedgreatly greatly reduced so let’s talkabout that for just a minute and becausewe have to reduce the energy in order touse this cooking method then there arealso going to be some other changes inthe bread that we already need to bepreparing ourselves for first of all weare not going to right now what we’regoing to do the next step on this iswe’re going to put this on the stove andwe’re going to boil it for 10 minutesand the bread is still in here in thewater notice that these are a little bitfloaty I might want to put a weight onthose to kind of weigh them downthe reason that we want to put this onthe stove and boil the water for 10minutes is to get everything as hot aswe canI’ve put rubber bands around the foil sono steam can get inside we don’t wantany water or steam inside of where theactual bread is and the bread has risento about 3/4 of the way to the top sowe’re going to get everything hot hothot for 10 minutes of boiling and thenwe’re going to put it in our new wonderbag now once it goes in that Wonder bagwe don’t add any more energy so what isthat going to mean no browning there thecrust look it there won’t be a crust itwill be white all around crustless breadit will be completely done on the insideit will taste almost the same as thisbread does but it will look very verydifferent so we are now ready to go tothat next step I’m going to put this onthe stove and boil it for 10 minutesI’ll bring you back when we’re readythen to put it in the Wonder bag so seeyou in a minute all right it has been 10minutes in that pen is very hot you mayeven be able to see the steam rising soI’m going to turn it off and I’m goingto bring it over and it is importantthat it stays level on this pillow okayand we’re not going to open this wemight have all the heat to be saved asmuch as possible next step is to bringthem this piece so that this way andwe’re going to wrap it making sure thatthe fun edge is completely sealed allthe way around and because remember thisone doesn’t quite meet in the back I’mgoing to put this bungee cord aroundabout right hereokay and I’m going to tuck this in asmuch as possible and get the other pieceit will go over the top though I need toshow you the gap there’s the gap becausethis was made for really a smaller panbut we’ve got it coveredso this part is going to be the lid andthen this part is going to come down onto that side that is not quite togetherand I’m going to take another bungee andput around everything okay make sure wedon’t have any gapsand we perfect and we’ll leave it likethis for probably three hours thatprobably will take three hours turn itaround so they can see itso where’s the backsideJim giving me prompts from behind thecamera I’m glad he did okay so where’sthat we’ll be back in three hours whenour bread should be done so see you thenthe moment of truth is here it has beenthree hours and 10 minutes now in thepast four hours I’ve had my oven on 460degrees for four straight hours to makethose three loaves of bread now comparethe energy consumption between thosethree loaves of bread and these thatwere going to open in a minute hopefullythey will be done that took ten minutesof energy – well it probably took about15 minutes of energy to boil that waterfor 10 minutes so let’s see what theresults are or it’s still quite hotstill very hot did you I hope you’reable to see that steam so it is reallyholding its temperature very well okaynow because these haven’t baked in theoven they’re not stupid hot but they area little bit warmokay this is what this looks like andnotice that it’s all the way up to thetop and this is done I’m gonna get it’sjust not quite cool enough for me tohandle on my own so here we have ourfirst loaf so they look anemic I knowbut they are completely done so we canhave little round pieces of toast orbutter or whatever and considering theenergy difference perhaps we can adjustto the whiteness of this bread at leastwe now know that in a in a pinch wherewe’re without electricityoh this one came all the way to the topthat’s on our little butane stove wemight be able to boil it for 10 minutesand then use this for okay I’m gonnahave to get in here with this knife toobig of a knife but we would be able togo ahead and cook bread if we needed toin an energy crunch or a power outage wecould actually with 10 minutes on ourlittle butane stove have a couple ofloaves of bread that could last us for awhile little damp on the bottom I don’tthink I don’t know how any water wouldhave gotten in there but this is alittle damp on the bottom you canprobably see that glistening a littlebit so I will probably just cut this offand toss it so I do want to see thecondition of the bread on the insideyes that’s still really buoy I don’tknow how that got wet but here’s the howthe bread looks like on the inside andit’s completely baked through so thiswill this will work it will be wonderfulso this was a successful experiment andwe now have a larger operation here thatwe can do and Wonderbag cooking forlarger quantities and bread so thank youfor joining us this has been fun and wewill see you at our next video[Music]