SC - Re: seeking recipes (Outdoor Feast)

[Decker, Terry D.]

For grins and in response to the message about baking bread on a griddle, I
tried baking a small cottage loaf this past weekend on a griddle covered by
a metal bowl, a high tech version of the cloche oven.  I managed to charcoal
the bottom, perfectly brown the top and undercook the middle.  The problem
was not having a feel for the heat source.

You can bake bread using anything from a flat rock to the covered cauldron,
but you need to experiment to find out what the heat source will do with the
particular oven.  I'm expecting to lose about a dozen loafs before I get the
makeshift cloche to work.  I certainly need to raise the griddle and I may
need to spread some cracked millet on the griddle to help insulate the
dough.

The recipe I'm using is:

Dissolve 1 teaspoon dry active yeast in 1 cup warm water.  Let the yeast
start to froth (about 10 min.)
Sift 1 teaspoon salt with 2 cups of flour.
Stir the flour into yeast mixture 1/2 cup at a time.
Knead on a floured surface until the dough is smooth and elastic.
Form the dough into a ball.
Let rise about 30 minutes in a covered, greased bowl.
Shape your loaf.
Bake until the crust is brown and the loaf sounds hollow when you tap it on
the bottom (30 min to 1 hr).

As a word of advice, when making dough outdoors, keep some muslin squares
large enough to cover your bowls handy.  Weighted corners are also a nice
idea.  Bugs love fermentation.

Next, why not bake the bread in the cauldron?  Bread keeps well for several
days.  You do not have to bake daily.  And you certainly do not need to bake
at the same time you are cooking your meal.  It has been a very common
practice both  by professional bakers and householders to bake bread twice a
week.

Now if you want fresh bread with the meal and a dying fire is a problem, try
a keyhole fire pit.  Dig a circular pit about 18 inches in depth.  Extend a
trench out from the pit (usually in the direction of the prevailing wind).
The trench should be narrow enough that your pots will fit across it and you
should line the lip of the trench with stones, bricks, or logs to help
support the weight of the pots and keep the lip from crumbling.  Tapering
the trench from 18 inches at the fire pit end to about 4 inches at the far
end helps control the temperature on the bottom of the pot by where you
position it.

Build a fire in the fire pit.  Keep the fire going.  As the fire builds a
bed of coals, transfer the coals to the trench with a shovel (I use a WWII
entrenching tool).  By keeping the fire going in the pit, you keep building
a steady supply of coals, which can be transferred occasionally to the
trench to maintain the temperature of the cooking fire.  You can also set up
a spit by the firepit and use it for roasting meat. 

Bear  

> Korrin says...
> > What! Breads and Pies should be easy. The cowboys had chuckwagon cooks
> 
> HAH! SHOULD be easy!!! :)
> actually, the biggest trouble is that the handy dandy Lodge type cast iron
> pot with the flanged lid that is so handy for putting coals on was
> invented
> by Napoleon I hear (from the propaganda of the Lodge people). I certainly
> havent seen any flat lidded pots in the Museum collections, primary
> sources
> and other stuff I've been looking at. Again, I'd love to be proven wrong,
> but all the pots I've seen are the cauldron shape, with nicely domed lids
> (tricky to stack coals on) and a round bottom (tricky to control the heat
> on underneath).
> 
> Again, if we assume that the folks who made bread were not the same folks
> who would use a cauldron pot, this makes sense.
> 
> Still, since the cauldraon shaped pots are $$$$, we've been using the
> Lodge
> types and plan on playing with breads and the like maybe next summer
> (right
> now we're lucky if we can keep the fire going for long enough to cook
> everything! Told you we are new at this...)
> 
> --AM
> 
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