Making
German Dauerbrot Rations
By
Jonathan Bocek
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An
original example of German Dauerbrot 'B' |
One of the
easiest German rations to reproduce is the German
Dauerbrot 'B' ration. Basically it is preserved
bread that is "gift" wrapped with paper that
has a label printed directly on it.
STEP
1
Purchase
your materials. You will need to buy some cotton
twine to use for binding. Some sort of thick
newsprint paper that is larger in size than the
standard 8½ x 11paper. This paper can
usually be found in tablets at any arts & crafts
store or office supply. Then you will need the
all important bread.
We have found PEMA
Brand Pumpernickel bread to be the best for
this (picture of the bread can be seen at the
following link). It has the ideal size, look,
& portion for use. Usually you can find this
bread at most German food stores, import foods shops,
or online at Germandeli.com: click
here.
STEP
2
Printing the label will take some time to get
right. Basically, since there is so many
different types of programs and printers out there, we
will not go into detail on how to size and position
the image for printing. This will take some
trial and error to find the best position for your
printer, but you should be able to figure it out in
about two or three trials. Ok, so you want to
save the following image:
Now, you
will want to use the program your most comfortable
with (I use MS Word for it is easy to position and
resize images to paper widths). You want to get
the above label positioned on your newsprint paper so
that when its wrapped around the PEMA bread, it lines
up like the original pictured above.
STEP
3
Remove the
modern wrapping and label from the PEMA bread.
Place the bread on the paper that you have just
printed the label on. Wrap it as if your
wrapping a gift (seam is on the bottom and the label
is on the top). Note that when folding the sides
on the long ends, the bottom end fold is boxed &
the top is triangular (see below).
Next you
will take two pieces of good cotton twine and bind the
package as seen in the top picture. You will
note that no glue is needed and that the twine is not
a continuous strand. You can tell this on the
original for the intersection of the string does not
twist in any way. Tie off the twine using small
knots (no bows) and your done. Its not the most
tasty ration but there is worse. Just be sure to
get some sugar beet syrup or the such to put on it to
make it a little better.
Sources:
- Images & information provided by:
Doug Nash, Don Peterson, & Mr. Hidenori Tanamura.
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