If you have a recipe you like that works well for bread or bread substitute on extended trips, please share it. The recipe should require no dairy product so that it can be stored / carried without concern for spoilage. I don’t have and would rather not carry a reflector oven, but should I consider that?
TIA.
~~Chip
bread
try Cache Lake breads. They are fry breads. Very good.
Check out bwca.com. Under their message boards there is a camping recipe board. I have found lots of good info on that site. The basic Hudson bay bread that the boy scouts make is a great option for breakfast. Put peanut butter on it. You can do a hudson bay bread google search.
I bring tortilla’s and bagels in place of bread.
I’ll check it out
I’ll take a look at the bwca site you mentioned.
Tortillas, yes, I usually bring them because they don’t get crushed in packing like bread does. I forget the brand names, but the ones I’ve gotten last so long it scares me. Must be some heavy preservatives. If you eat enough of them, you’d probably live forever!
I don’t NEED bread. But, about a week out, a hot, fresh bread would be a nice treat.
~~Chip
I always miss bread
I have taken English Muffins & made little pizzas with them-Boboli sauce in packets, pepperoni & a little cheese with foil packets. Also, flatbread, pitas & Melba toast are pretty yummy. I put the flatbread in a hard plastic sandwich container-lots of spicy flavors to choose from. Boboli pizza crust will keep for awhile.
Drop biscuits in oil, using powered milk-honey on top.
I know it is not the same as hot fluffy bread! 
no need to miss it
if you have the time to proof it and let it rise…you can sleep with it to make the dough rise…
Thats what our group had to do at minus 25 degrees.
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=2947
Tortillas
bisquick
mix works pretty good—best way to prepare it is wrap it around a stick and hold it over an open flame–campfire works best but if you are in an area where they are not allowed or if you are seriously into LNT then you can use a backpacking stove.
Outback Oven
Are you a fire cook or a stove cook? I use a stove for cooking, and I use an outback oven for the majority of my bread baking. I like the cache lake products, particularly the italian bread. I also like the krusteaz mixes for muffins though I make them as one big “breakfast bread” (as my kids call it). One package makes enough for 2 adults and 3 teenagers, so if you don’t have a big group you might want to half it. Look for the Krusteaz mixes that only need water; there are a number of them.
I also use bisquick for drop biscuits. Add some shredded cheese, garlic, and italian seasoning and you’ve got a great bread. I also use bisquick pizza mix for making pizzas using home dehydrated goodies - sauce, hamburger, mushrooms, green peppers, etc. Shred some cheese and ummmm.
I use the big outback oven that has a 12" skillet, lid, temp gauge, and convection “hat”. It makes a large amount, and if you don’t cook for a crowd it may be too big. You can use one of your own pans instead.
For bread that I bring with me, I use bagels for the first couple of days and then tortillas. You can make your own tortillas pretty easily - flour, water, and a touch of salt. Some people add a fat but I was taught by a Mexican who never did them that way. The hardest thing about making tortillas is rolling them really flat. However, they can cook on a grill or hot rock on the fire so they’re really easy.
Pam
That stove top bannock
its good…add rosemary and garlic powder or cheese and fry in a tiny bit of olive oil… or raisins and sugar and cinnamon for another variation.
Its a staple on my longer trips.
Pita Does It For Me
After a lifetime of backpacking, mule packing, and expedition canoeing, I’m sold on pita. It packs well into a tupperware dish (waterproof), and it satisfies the need for sandwiches and gravy soaking as good as anything out there.
Experimental loaf # 1
– Last Updated: Nov-23-08 10:43 PM EST –
Didn't find anything on the bwca site, but did find an interesting thread on a backpacking site. Of several options discussed, I decided to try out a fellows recommendation to use an "oven" of a small pot inside a big pot. I fished through the trash barrel in the shop and retrieved three cheapie little paint brushes with hollow metal tube handles, the kind you can buy at some hardware stores, a half-dozen in a bag. I'd used them for epoxy work, then thrown them out. I cut off the handles and threw them in to the cook kit. I laid those tubes on the bottom of the big pot to create air space under the little pot. Dough went into the little pot. A cover went on the big pot, which became the oven.
This small loaf was made from a cup of bread flour, .5 cup of a mix of whole wheat flour, cracked wheat and steel oats, .5 tsp salt, 2 tsp powdered nonfat milk, all combined in a baggie; 1 tsp brown sugar in its own baggie; 1 tsp yeast in its own baggie. I proofed the yeast, sugar and some warm water, then added the rest of the bagged ingredients and enough water to make a doughy consistency. I coated the small pot with olive oil, dropped in the dough ball, covered and set it down near the campfire to rise.
I let it rise to about double the size, removed the cover, set the small pan onto the tubes inside the big pan, put the cover on the big pan, and placed the big pan on some rocks in the fire pit, sweeping coals underneath it. My original plan was to bake it on my camp stove, but I didn't like the way the Coleman Exponent stove was flaming up when I set it on a low-simmer. I think stove-top ovening best because it is easyier and would be more consistent, but cooked on the fire instead.
I tried not to open the pot and look at the loaf as it baked because that would release all the heat, but finally broke down and gave a look. I felt the loaf wasn't cooking fast enough so I heaped more coals under and around the pot. Let it cook longer. It would have been good to time it, but using a fire like this, it wasn't really going to be a repeatable process, so what the heck.
The next time I took the cover off the top was nicely browned and cracked from expansion. Removed from heat. Extracted small pan from big pan. Popped the loaf out. Hot, hot, hot, and smelled great. It tasted excellent, too, only the bottom, while not burnt, was way too stiff/crisp/hard. I need either bigger tubes for more separation of the pans, or to cook at a higher temperature from the start.
For an experiment, loaf 1 turned out great. I need to try it again on the stove and see if I can get a better bottom consistency.
Bread in the backcountry is definately doable!
pic: http://home.comcast.net/~ChipCanoe/Misc/ExLoaf1.jpg
~~Chip
Packit Gourmet Bread
I tried the skillet bread from Packit Gourmet on my last trip. I got the Italian Pesto Dipping Sauce to go with it and boy was it good! Here’s the site:
http://www.packitgourmet.com/
I haven’t tried their other bread but I bet it’s good too. I did try the biscuits and gravy based on a good review in another forum. It was really good and made a lot! I just needed a frying pan for both items.
Bannock
Bannock is the traditional bread of canoe trippers. There are hundreds of recipes and variations. Here is my basic recipe:
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 c. powdered milk
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder (always use good baking powder)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 t of cream of tartar
To bake, brown the bottom of the cake. Then tilt pan on edge in front of the fire, and let bake.
Hre’s a video on it
http://www.solotripping.com/vid.php?id=32
Different Types of Bread/Biscuits
A hiker friend of mine brought biscuits that he cooked in a pan over the campfire. I don’t know if he used a mix or brought the rolls that you can bake that are raw, but it can be done in a pan w/tin foil on top.
He served that with a sausage gravy mix.
-Capri
Beer bread
We had this for a potluck lunch at work. This was amazing bread-delicious! nobody could believe that it was so simple! 3 cups self rising flour, 1 cup sugar & 1 beer.
used in an Outback Oven or Dutch oven
– Last Updated: Nov-18-08 10:34 PM EST –
prepackaged in a quart freezer ziplock bag:
2 Cups flour (white or 2/3rds+ white & 1/3 wheat)
1 tablespoon or 1 packet of yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar
add to ziplock and zip closed:
2/3 cup hot (not to hot) H2o
tablspoon+ of olive oil
kneed dough in closed ziplock 5+ minutes and invert ziplock to drop dough into Bake Oven (20min) or Dutch oven (+/- 20min), let rise 10+ minutes and bake. I've used it as pizza dough, bread, calzones, rolls etc. Adding cheese, Itallion or pizza spice, garlic, cinnimon, fresh berries, dried fruit,nuts or what ever 'floats your boat' for simple variations. nothing like hot bread out'a the oven in the backcountry. flat breads seem to cook better, just push down and flatten the dough a bit
What do you do with
the flour and sugar after you drink the beer?
Experimental loaf # 2a
Steve was over Saturday pitching in with help on THE WALL project. When we took a lunch break, I mixed up a batch of dough–same basic recipe as loaf #1. I cooked it in the pot-in-pot as before, only I used the medium size pot over the Coleman Exponent stove.
It was actually me second attempt at #2. Last weekend I made dough and while it was rising I was going to clean the air intakes on the stove. I got off track and ended up having to put the dough in the regular oven.
I used poor scientific method on 2a, since I changed both the cook method (stove) and the pot that served as my oven. Also, I timed the cooking–figured 40 minutes should be right. The loaf was a good but undercooked. However, the bottom was still too tough. Not as bad as loaf 1, but then, it was undercooked.
With the medium pot serving as the oven, there is less room for air to circulate, and less “overhead” space for the loaf. Air temp was about 28 degrees, and maybe insufficient heat was getting around the pot to the top. the top of the loaf was visibly pale. My conclusion was that I can turn up the burner a little more than what I had going, but that I should probably increase the air space between the bottom of the loaf and the bottom of the oven-pot, to try to avoid the overcooking of the bottom. Also, I’ll go back to the large pot for the oven-pot.
If the over-cooked bottom can’t be overcome, it’s still good bread, just need to plan on there be some waste.
~~Chip, bad-method man
Bakepacker
I have been using the Bakepacker, and I love it.
http://www.bakepacker.com/
It is a very lightweight accessory that fits into the bottom of your pot. You just add 1 inch of water to the pot and bake your bread, muffins, desserts, or what have you in a plastic bag. I pre-measure the flour and other ingredients at home in plastic bags, then just add water and cook them IN THE BAG! No cleanup, just carry the bag out with you.
bannock
from a boundary waters journal…use a pile of flour the size of your fist, enough baking powder to cover your palm, and a pinch of salt. Mix with melted lard, and bake in a greased frying pan (with lard) till done.
I even eat this at home…delicious and heart healthy too!