How to Make Bread while Camping?

This is a topic I’m really excited to talk about, as I’ve been holding myself from posting this until I actually get a chance to try it in real life! And it finally happened, so happily I will present my camping bread recipe.

Context and Challenges

You can safely skip all the explanations and go directly to the recipe if you don’t care how I came up with this recipe.

Making bread, and especially good a one is not easy. The recipe is simple but getting it right requires some practice, and moreover, thinking of cooking an item that requires baking in an oven while camping, this is, on a camping stove and pot, seems even out of the question.

So, I’ve been trying to improve my camping cooking skills, and, as part of this, I tried to make bread. Those who know me would know that I’m a passionate bread baker, so attempting this was kind of a natural next step for me.

Fact is, there are several bread kinds that are cooked on a stovetop. Naan, English muffins, or pita bread are some. However, English muffins require egg whites, which is challenging to keep fresh while camping; and pita bread requires a solid stream of heat to make its typical air bubble, (achieved at home by cooking it on a cast-iron skillet). So inspired by these two, I came up with a method to prepare something that would be a hybrid between English muffins and pita. That can be prepared between the time you pitch your tent and when you wake up for breakfast.

Challenges:

Aside from the challenges I already mentioned, nothing really of making bread seems compatible with camping: keeping the dough in a bowl, covered with plastic film so it doesn’t dry out, still, and on a warm place to rise, keeping it clean, mixing with clean hands, not to think about measuring ingredients with a kitchen scale!! Finally, the recipe requires rolling the dough balls.

So this is how I overcame it:

• Mixing dough with clean hands, clean place, covered with film so it doesn’t dry out: This seems like a job for a plastic bag, flexible enough to mix ingredients without touching them with dirty hands, easy to keep clean, additionally used as a container for dough while it rises. I tried many, I went with the 1qt Ziploc bags.
• Measuring ingredients: This is a tricky one. Having a precise amount of yeast, salt, olive oil, water, and four on the small scale without a kitchen scale is impossible in the wilderness! Carrying a kitchen scale just for making bread? No way Jose! As you’ll see there will be some small compromises on the items to carry but camping with a kitchen scale is ridiculous! So here is how I measure each ingredient:
  • Flour: This one is easy! Measure it at home and carry it inside the bag for mixing! Check! Markings can be made with a sharpie so we are able to reuse the mixing bag.
  • Water and Olive Oil: This is more tricky, liquids are heavy and we cannot afford to carry them on separate containers, so what to do? Simple! Get a makeshift measuring vessel. I found a travel 3 flOz container (thank you TSA!) that fit almost exactly the amount of water I needed, so I drew lines for water and olive oil in it.
  • Salt: How to measure 2 grams of salt? 2 options I could think of. Pre-measure with kitchen scale and place on drug-dealer style Ziploc bags; or conveniently enough, buy 1 gram cooking salt packets on Amazon! I went for the latter.
  • Yeast: In the recipe I add a lot of yeast, to compensate for the overnight temperature drop that is typically experienced in the wilderness. So I take a 6g packet and add an eyeballed amount (around half).
• Cooking it: This bread is shaped after pita bread or naan (if you will) so it can be cooked on the stovetop without completely burning the crust or consuming all your gas canister. It has double the olive oil I would put on a typical recipe with exactly this in mind: It helps not to burn the bread while cooking it! I have to admit that I kind of burned the first 6 buns I made.
• Rolling it: So this is where I made a compromise. I carried a very small bamboo cutting board to roll the buns and I managed to successfully roll them on it. I used the same liquid container bottle! To keep everything clean I put everything together inside of a Ziploc bag.

You must leave the bread to cool down to finish cooking on the inside. After that, you can cut it open and enjoy it with your favorite camping stuffing, like peanut butter!

Bon Apetit!