Camp Beer Bread
A yeasted loaf that bakes in a dutch oven over coals. Beer does the flavor work, dry milk keeps the cooler out of it.
- calories
- 230
- weight
- 3.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 66
- protein
- 7 g
- serves
- 10, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 45 min
- total time
- 65 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Snack
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Bread flour | 3 1/2 cups | all-purpose plus 1 tbsp vital wheat gluten per cup also works |
|---|---|---|
| Wheat bran | 1/4 cup | |
| Brown sugar | 2 tbsp | coconut sugar or honey is fine |
| Active dry yeast | 2 1/4 tsp | one packet |
| Salt | 1 1/2 tsp | |
| Instant rice | 1/3 cup dry | cooks up to about 3/4 cup |
| Powdered whole milk | 3 tbsp | stands in for the milk or buttermilk |
| Cider vinegar | 1 tsp | optional, makes the milk read as buttermilk |
| Strong beer | 12 oz | ale or stout, room temperature, flat is fine |
| Oil or butter | 1 tbsp | for the pot |
Method
- Pour boiling water over the instant rice, cover, and let it sit ten minutes. Fluff it and let it cool to warm. Hot rice kills yeast.
- Warm the beer to room temperature if it has been in a cooler. Stir the vinegar into it.
- Dump the dry mix into the pot, add the rice and the beer, and stir until it comes together. Knead in the pot for about five minutes. It should be tacky, not sticky.
- Cover and let it rise somewhere warm until roughly doubled. An hour in summer, two in the cold. Punch it down and shape it into a round.
- Grease the dutch oven, drop the loaf in, cover, and let it rise again for thirty minutes while the coals burn down.
- Bake at about 375F: roughly 8 coals under the oven and 16 on the lid for a 12-inch. Rotate the oven a third turn every ten minutes and the lid the other way.
- Done at 40 to 50 minutes. The bottom sounds hollow when you knock it. Get it out of the pot or the crust steams soft.
This is a bread that keeps its schedule on your side. Yeast, one rise, one shape, one bake, and no starter to feed. The cooked rice is the part worth keeping: the gelatinized starch holds water in the crumb, so the loaf stays soft an extra day in a hot car. Instant rice gets you there in ten minutes instead of forty, which is the whole reason it is in the trail version.
Two swaps came from the original. Fresh milk or buttermilk becomes powdered whole milk in the dry mix, with a teaspoon of vinegar in the beer to get the same tang and a little more lift. Everything except the beer is dry and premixed, so the only cooler item is gone. Beer wants to be flat and room temperature going in — cold beer stalls the rise, and the carbonation does nothing here since the yeast is doing that job.
Packing
Flour, bran, sugar, salt, dry milk, and instant rice go in one gallon bag at home. Yeast rides in its own packet, since it dies if it sits against salt for weeks. Beer is the only wet thing you carry.
Variations
- No dutch oven: bake it as flatbreads in a greased skillet over low coals, ten minutes a side.
- Swap half the bread flour for whole wheat if you eat that way normally. The loaf will be denser.
- A cup of shredded hard cheese kneaded in at the end turns it into dinner on its own.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/yummy-recipe-beer-bread