[Sca-cooks] Pennsic Bread Recommendations?

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> My Lord & I are going to be making it to Pennsic this
> year for war week (YIPPEEEE!!!!!  First time ever for
> him, and first time in years for me) and are trying to
> keep from having to hit the super market (or the
> Cooper's store... well, except for the choco milk)
> while we're there.. Which for most things is okay,
> except.. bread.
>
> We've briefly discussed a dutch oven (I know, not
> period, but.. better than having to get into our
> dragon and drive down the road and go into a
> supermarket, and use plastic to buy bread!), but I was
> wondering if there were any other options that don't
> require serious construction? (a big unglazed flower
> pot over a grate kind of thing, or EASY ways to build
> a bread oven from generic bricks or SOMETHING)
>
> Are there any recommendations of changes to the
> process of bread baking, or changes in the recipe for
> cooking over an open flame?  I've never baked without
> a twisty knob with numbers on it, so I'm looking for
> tips, I know bread, I don't know bread on an open
> flame. :)

While I'm not much of a baker, all you really need for an oven is a heat
source and an enclosure- preferably one that will help retain the heat so
you can heat evenly.

I suspect you don't want to cook bread (or anything else) over an open
flames- the heat is too irregular.

As far as a dutch oven, it's pretty easy- put it next to the fire/coals, but
your bread container in it on a couple of rocks so it's not touching the
bottom of the DO, put the lid on, and just keep an eye on the fire. You
might want to rotate the pot occasionally, to make sure you're getting even
heat. This seems to work best for quick breads, like corn bread, but I'm
sure it would work for regular bread as well try it at home before you go
off into the Pennsic wilds ;-)

There is an oven designed to go on your Coleman stove that seems to work
pretty well- not terribly expensive or bulky, and it collapses down, or some
do.

Bread actually keeps fairly well at Pennsic, if you keep it reasonably cool
and have whole loaves, unsliced. Ours is usually fine for 3 or 4 days, as I
remember. And, since we live on the lake, we have no problem asking the fish
and ducks (when they're there) to dispose of the stale bread for us- in
fact, every AM when I stagger out of my tent, I have half a pond full of
interested fish wanting to know where their breakfast is ;-) Makes it easy
to invite them to a fish fry that evening ;-)

Alternatively, you could build a masonery oven as some people have. We've
never bothered, since we have a full range we got just for Pennsic.
Depending on where you're camping, I suspect we'd let you use it, in
exchange for a loaf of fresh-baked bread ;-)


Phlip

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....