Campervan Cooking – Bush Bread

Since I’m baking on a Cadac Safari Chef, I’ll be using a simple and basic bread recipe. The method and ingredients are the bare minimum for baking bread. Feel free to spice up your bread by adding all sorts of yummy stuff like olives, sun dried tomatoes, herbs and spices or even cheese. Your imagination is the limit here.

Ingredients:

3 cups flour
1 cup tepid(warm) water
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt

Method:

Start by adding the yeast to the tepid water and allow it to dissolve. Make sure that the water is not too hot(you should be able to place your finger into the water and keep it there for 10 seconds) or you may kill the yeast. Next, add the flour to a mixing bowl. It’s a good idea to sift the flour if you happen to have a sieve available. If not, measure the flour by pouring it loosely into a cup but don’t pat it down or it will become too dense. Add the salt and mix the dry ingredients together. Pour the water and yeast mixture into a separate mixing bowl and gradually add the flour, stirring as you go. Keep adding more flour until the mixture becomes a stiff porridgy consistency. Now it’s time to get your hands involved. Begin to knead the dough by folding and re-folding it. Add the remaining dry ingredients. Don’t worry if the last of the flour is not picked up as the dough will naturally only collect what is needed. If your dough is still too wet when all the dry ingredients have been added, you may need to add some more flour. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes. This is an important stage as kneading aerates the dough. After all, we want to produce a light-textured bread, not a brick suitable for building houses. Place the dough in a shallow bowl dusted with flour (the flour will prevent the tacky dough from sticking to the bowl). Cover with cling wrap or a damp tea towel and place in a warm dry place for about one our to rise or until double in size.

As we are traveling and only have the Cadac Safari Chef for baking, we will be using that but you can bake bread in just about anything that can retain a bit of heat. If you are in the bush, try baking bread in an old termite mound (make sure it’s abandoned as you don’t want to end up with a gazillion homeless ants or disturbing any snakes) or place the dough over a fire and cover with a metal drum. In fact, you can probably use any kettle style braai(barbeque). Once the dough has risen and double in size, light the gas braai or in the case of a barbeque, light the fire when you finish mixing the dough. Carefully remove the dough from the bowl being careful not to squish it. Place it on the grid (cover the grid with some tin foil to stop the bread from sticking) and bake for about 45 minutes. To check if your bread has cooked, tap it with your finger or a spoon. You should get a hollow sound that indicates that he bread has indeed baked. Enjoy.