Editor's note: This is the first installment in a series of features on breadmaking by Sandy Nelson, The Desperate Cook, who lives in the great expanse of southeast Utah.

For young rebels in the early 1970s, learning to bake bread was considered a necessary step toward liberation from an unhealthy dependence on processed, packaged foods. My first step was more of a stumble.

I aspired to cook tasty, wholesome, whole-grain breads. How hard could it be when the Egyptians were baking leavened bread more than 4,000 years ago without packaged yeast, mixers and rolling pins?

It was hard enough — the bread, I mean. I tried and tried, but I could never get the yeast to feed on sugars in the dough and burp the little carbon-dioxide bubbles that make the dough rise. Thus my creations had the heft and texture of adobe bricks.

Years after I gave up on cracking the chemical code of leavened bread, I discovered a parallel world of breads that didn't depend on gassy micro-organisms to give them life — breads like tortillas, pita and naan. Eventually I would try to make them all, but my portal back to breadmaking was that simple staple of Native America: frybread.

Comfort food with a long tradition

Like the comfort foods in many cultures, frybread is high in fat and calories. Where I live, north of the Navajo Indian Nation in southeast Utah, it's a culprit in the high incidence of diabetes among Native people. In moderation, however, frybread is a harmless treat with enormous cultural significance for many tribes.

It's said that frybread was invented by Indian hunters and farmers deprived of their traditional diets of meat, vegetables and grains after they were confined to reservations and forced to subsist on government-issued commodities such as flour, sugar and corn oil. For that reason, frybread is a symbol of resilience and ingenuity, of making something out of nothing in order to survive.

According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (edited by Andrew F. Smith, Oxford University Press, 2004), earlier versions of frybread might have existed among tribes that interacted with Spanish and French explorers. The encyclopedia notes frybread's resemblance to Spanish sopaipillas and churros and the leavened breads eaten by French traders.

Whatever its genesis, the earliest frybread must have tasted different than the delicious flatbreads served today at powwows and reservation restaurants. Before corn oil and powdered milk became available, frybread was fried in deer or bear fat and water was used to mix the dough, according to many Native food historians.

Simple matters

Frybread's simplicity appeals to cooks who are intimidated by moody, microscopic life forms like yeast. A batch can be made in the time it takes to mix a few ingredients, knead them into a smooth dough and wait for the oil to heat up. There's no waiting for single-celled fungi to huff and puff until the dough doubles in size, though some versions of frybread do use yeast.

The ingredients for modern frybread are as basic as it gets. Even culinary deserts like Monticello, Utah, have stores that sell flour, baking soda, milk, salt and vegetable oil. Toppings can be as simple as butter, honey or jam or as elaborate as beans, meat, cheese and other typical taco fixings.

A Quinault Indian friend introduced me to frybread and taught me how to make it in the early 1980s, when I lived in Aberdeen, Wash. I eventually misplaced the recipe, but it didn't matter: I made it so often that I knew it by heart.

Over the years, frybread became less central to my diet and I ate it only at Northwest powwows. While moving to Santa Fe in 2003, I ate my first Navajo taco at a restaurant in Mexican Hat, Utah, and was surprised to learn that what made this taco "Navajo" was its frybread foundation.

It's great to live in frybread country again, but it's even better to remember the recipe that allows me to make it at home. (This recipe was adapted from memory with help from various online sources.)

BASIC FRYBREAD

(makes 4 large pieces)

2 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

Vegetable oil or shortening for frying

In a bowl, mix dry ingredients before adding milk. Knead into a workable dough on a lightly floured surface. Break off 8 small or 4 large pieces, form into balls and flatten into discs by hand or with a rolling pin (the dough will puff up as it fries).

If making Navajo tacos, make a well in the center of each disc to allow sauces and toppings to settle there. Fry in hot oil about 4 or 5 minutes — turning midway through the cooking time — until both sides are golden.