Bread

On a three-week solo trip on Birch Creek in central Alaska, I learned to bake bread rolls in a Dutch oven. I don't recommend a cast iron Dutch oven for backpacking. But in this case, the weight came in handy as ballast for keeping the front of the canoe down in the water while I paddled from the back.

For the first batch of bread, I wasn't patient and didn't wait for the dough to rise, so I settled for hardtack. After that, I gave myself half a day for baking a batch of bread.

An Alaska tradition is sourdough, and I perhaps should have used that to make my bread. But on that trip I used yeast. Only later did I get into baking with sourdough, which until recently I have mostly used for weekly pancakes. With the stay-at-home rules now in place, I'm baking sourdough bread. Sourdough follows its own timeline, so it's a good thing to try while hanging around the house with a flexible schedule. My last two loaves were, to my taste, close to perfect. So I'm sharing my recipe for sourdough bread along with one for my campfire rolls. (And I've added one for sourdough pancakes.)

I am frequently annoyed by online recipes that require me to get through a lot of commentary before getting to the actual recipe. I've got stories to go with my campfire bread, but here are the recipes. Maybe I'll tell the stories some other time.

Canoe Camping Oatmeal Rolls

Ingredients

Feel free to approximate these amounts. That's what I did.

~ 2 cups water
~ 1/3 cup oil
~ 2 teaspoons salt
~ 1 tablespoon yeast
~ 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
~ 5 cups flour

Before breakfast heat some water, not too hot, and pour it into the Dutch oven with salt, oil, yeast, and a bit of sugar if you want to help the yeast along. I let that set until it looks and tastes like the yeast is working. If you have old-fashioned oats, you may want to add them with the water. but if its quick oats, you can add them with the flour after the water gets good and yeasty. Don't do all the flour at once; add the last cup or so gradually and stop when you have the right texture (which you'll learn after a few tries). Mix it all up good, put the lid on, and set the Dutch oven in the sun. Let it rise until double—about 1-1/2 or 2 hours, depending on the weather.

You can experiment with the oil. Maybe you prefer without. I had a lot of oil along on that trip and it was a good source of energy, which I needed. And it helped keep the bread from drying out.

While it's rising, fix breakfast and then nurse the fire so you'll have coals later for baking. When it has risen properly, punch it down and form it into six or seven pieces and plop them back into the oven to rise for another half hour or so until the dough doubles again.

Scrape away all but a few coals from the fire and put the Dutch oven on top of those. Then scoop the rest of the coals onto the lid. There should be a little flame yet on top, but mostly coals. You can add small sticks to the top if the coals are cooling too much, but don't overdo.

Spend the next half hour to 45 minutes striking camp and packing the canoe, and when you are done you'll have have a hot batch of hearty bread rolls. Put a slab of cheese in one or two for lunch. Make sure the oven has cooled enough before you put it in the canoe—unless you have an aluminum canoe (but those are noisy and you won't see as much wildlife). You can be back on the river shortly after noon, and you can still get in six hours or more of paddling.

Sourdough Bread

Ingredients

~ 1 pint sourdough starter
~ 1 cup water (reduce if you find you need too much flour)
~ 2 teaspoons salt
~ 3 cups flour

I usually keep my sourdough starter in the fridge. If you do, you may want to take it out an hour or two before you start mixing up your bread, which should be before you go to bed.

In the winter, I use warm water, when the inside temperature at night stays at about 60 degrees F (15 C). In summer I use cold water, to prevent the dough from rising too fast overnight. Mix water, salt, and a cup of flour in a bowl with a wooden spoon (preferably one engraved with "Be good and have fun"). If I include a cup of whole wheat flour, I add it first. Add another cup of the flour and stir it in. If you want to try autolysing, I think you just let the mix sit for 30 minutes or so (look it up; I haven't found it that helpful). At this point, the dough starts sticking to the spoon, and it's about time to use your hands. Dust the dough with flour and scrape it out of the bowl. Add flour while mixing/kneading until you have the dough texture you want. I try to keep it a bit sticky, but that makes for messier kneading.

Knead it until it starts to bounce back, or as long as you need depending on how frustrated you are (with life, politics, yourself, someone else). Form the dough into a ball and put it back in the bowl. Cover it and go to bed.

In the morning, check to see if it has doubled. If you poke it lightly with your finger, a dent should stay there. If it springs back, it's not ready yet; put it in a warm spot for a while. Sometimes by morning (especially in summer) the dough has over-risen. Oh well, it still seems to turn out OK.

When it's doubled (or more), punch it down, scrape it out of the bowl onto a floured board or counter, and knead the bubbles out.

Grease the Dutch oven with butter or oil and sprinkle it with a bit of corn meal. Form the dough into a ball and put it in the Dutch oven. Ours is maybe a 3 or 3.5 quart size. So this is a fairly small loaf. If you have a bigger Dutch oven, you can increase the ingredients to make one of those hefty German loaves.

Check the bread after a couple of hours. When it has just about doubled again, put the Dutch oven lid in the oven and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Experiment with scoring the top for a nice effect. I sometimes add a pat of butter or a bit of oil to the top of the loaf and sprinkle it with coarse salt.

When the oven is heated, put the hot lid on the Dutch oven and the Dutch oven in the big oven to bake for 30 minutes. Turn down the heat to 400 degrees, take the lid off, and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until golden and crispy. Dump the loaf out onto a cooling rack. Let it sit for awhile, but have the first piece while it is still warm if possible. It's hard to beat fresh bread, still hot, with butter and brown sugar. But this bread I also like to eat just plain, hot or cold.

This simple recipe has been working for me, but I suggest you check lots of other recipes and try different things. Bread seems to fill some of life's most basic needs, including one for happiness.

Sourdough Pancakes

There are times when it is not convenient to make sourdough bread. To keep the starter reasonably fresh, you can use it to make pancakes every week or two (or daily, if you don't keep the starter in the refrigerator). It's not a bad idea to take the starter out of the fridge an hour or so before making pancakes.

These are lactose-free pancakes, enough for two people. They taste great with homemade "maple" syrup. (Add maple extract, or a maple flavoring after bringing 2 parts sugar to 1 part water to a boil.)

Ingredients

~ 1 pint sourdough starter
~ 2 eggs
~ 1 teaspoon oil
~ 1/4 teaspoon salt
~ 1 teaspoon baking soda
~ wheat germ (optional)

Put the heat on under a cast iron frying pan. Mix sourdough starter, eggs, oil, and salt. Add wheat germ if you need to thicken the batter. Stir in the baking soda. Add blueberries or nuts if you want. Pour the batter in the pan, one large pancake at a time. Serve with butter and hot syrup. Skip the butter for lactose-free.

If you need to make a bigger batch, add equal parts water and flour to the starter the night before, and leave it covered out of the fridge.