Bannock in a Pot
A yeasted loaf you can bake on a stove, mixed at home and finished in camp.
- calories
- 290
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 83
- protein
- 8 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 60 min
- total time
- 75 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 3 cups | bread flour works and lets you skip the gluten |
|---|---|---|
| Vital wheat gluten | 3 tbsp | 1 tbsp per cup of all-purpose flour |
| Active dry yeast | 2 1/4 tsp | one packet |
| Salt | 1 1/2 tsp | |
| Honey | 1 tbsp | carried in a squeeze tube |
| Coconut oil | 3 tbsp | solid at camp temps, melts fast |
| Warm water | 1 1/4 cups | about 300 ml, wrist-warm not hot |
Method
- Warm 300 ml of water on the stove until it is barely above body temperature. Too hot kills the yeast.
- Stir the honey into the water, sprinkle the yeast over it, and leave it ten minutes. It should foam. If it does not, the yeast is dead and you are making flatbread.
- Melt the coconut oil in the pot, pour it into the yeast water, then work in the flour mix a cup at a time.
- Knead on a clean stuff sack or cutting board for eight minutes, until the dough stops tearing when you stretch it.
- Oil the pot, drop the dough in, cover, and set it somewhere warm for an hour. It should roughly double.
- Punch it down, shape it to fit the pot, and let it rise a second time, about forty minutes.
- Bake covered on the lowest flame your stove holds, with a windscreen. Rotate the pot a quarter turn every five minutes. Forty to fifty minutes. The bottom will brown well before the top does.
- It is done when the loaf sounds hollow tapped and pulls away from the sides. Turn it out and let it cool before cutting or it will gum up.
Bread on a stove is a long job with a short ingredient list, which makes it a basecamp or car-camping project rather than a trail dinner. The original used a slow cooker and a fixed low heat. A pot on a simmering stove does the same thing badly enough to work: trapped steam, gentle sides, no direct radiant heat from above.
The vital wheat gluten matters more here than in an oven. Without dry heat setting a crust, the loaf depends on gluten structure alone to hold its shape, and plain all-purpose flour does not have enough. Coconut oil replaces butter because it survives a week in a pack without a cooler. Expect a soft, pale loaf with a browned bottom, not a crusty one.
Packing
Combine flour, gluten, yeast, and salt in one zip bag at home. Honey and coconut oil go in separate squeeze tubes. Nothing here needs a cooler.
Variations
- Swap up to half the flour for whole wheat. The loaf gets denser and takes a few more minutes.
- Olive oil or ghee in place of coconut oil, if that is what you already carry.
- Dried rosemary and a spoon of oil folded in before the first rise.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/when-life-gives-you-a-broken-oven-bake-bread-in-a-slow-cooker