The question of how to make bread when you’re a few days in comes up quite often. Packed-in bread often ends up getting flattened or may mold quickly in warmer weather. I don’t know about you, but after 3-4 days the craving for nice fresh bread really begins to set in!
We’ve tried to combat this need by including Toastees in many of our meals. We use Toastees with most of our egg dishes and a few others that we’d normally serve with a piece of toast or cornbread if we were at home. Although the Toastees go a long way toward quenching “real bread” cravings, nothing really quite does it like a warm fresh baked “loaf.”
Our method of choice is skillet baking. You don’t need to pack in any special equipment – all you need is a frying pan and some sort of domed lid, like your cookpot. If your cookpots came as a set, they probably already fit together nicely. If not, some jerry rigging might be necessary.
Because camp cooksets are often made of lightweight and rather thin metals, we always recommend using a coating of oil (olive or canola/olive packets) topped with a sprinkling of coarse ground cornmeal to “grease” the pan and reduce the likelihood of burning your bread. Combined together the two pretty much insure the bread will “easy release” from the pan; and the cornmeal adds a nice barrier between the dough and the pan as the bread begins to bake. This is an age-old trick used by grandmothers and pizza bakers alike who baked in variable heat conditions, so it’s a great trick to managing camp heat as well.
So here’s what you do:Step 1: Drizzle some oil (any oil will do) into the bottom of your pan. About ½ tablespoon (½ of an
olive oil or
canola oil packet) should do it if you’re cooking in a standard 6-9 inch backpacking pan. No need to spread it around - - just give the pan a good hearty shake.
Step 2: Sprinkle a little cornmeal into the pan and over the olive oil. This coarse layer will add a nice texture to the crust of your bread and at the same time help to prevent your bread from burning on the bottom. As an added measure, you may also want to try using a
heat diffuser under your pan, which will help distribute the heat more evenly.
Step 3: Pour your bread batter into the pan and place over low heat. If you need to pat the bread down into the pan – we recommend you sprinkle just a small amount of flour over the top of dough to allow your fingers to press down without sticking. Once the dough is all set, cover with a domed lid (aka your cookpot or perhaps
a piece of foil that you’ve arranged into a domed cover) – and place it over the heat.
When thinking about how to use your cookpot as a lid, just think of how you use your frying pan as a lid on your cookpot when making a pot of soup. Now just flip that image over, so the pan is on the bottom and the pot is on the top.
Step 4: When the top of your bread is bubbly and has lost it’s ‘wet sheen’,
it’s time to flip it! Drizzle another ½ tablespoon or so (the other ½ of your packet of olive oil) over the top of your bread along with a little more cornmeal. Run a knife or
spatula around the edge of the pan to loosen the crust from the edges of the pan. Take a deep breath, scoop up your bread with a spatula and flip it over to land back down in the pan. If you miss a little bit, just tuck the edges of the bread back down into the pan. Cover again and allow it to bake on low heat a little bit longer.
Step 5: Once the bread has finished cooking, remove from the heat and allow it to rest for about 5 minutes before slicing. Then sit back and enjoy a lovely warm slice of bread!
This method of skillet baking can be used with cornbread, biscuits, rustic French, bannock or just about any other type of bread you might be able to think of!
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