Oat Skillet Bread
A yeasted oat loaf baked in a covered pot over coals. Mixed from a dry premix and one packet of yeast.
- calories
- 260
- weight
- 3 oz
- cal / oz
- 87
- protein
- 8 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 35 min
- total time
- 55 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
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Oat flour | 1 1/2 cups | rolled oats run through a blender at home |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 1 1/2 cups | |
| Vital wheat gluten | 2 tbsp | do not skip it, oat flour has no structure |
| Granulated sugar | 2 tbsp | |
| Salt | 1 1/2 tsp | |
| Active dry yeast | 2 1/4 tsp | one packet |
| Ghee or shelf-stable butter powder | 3 tbsp | ghee keeps for weeks without a cooler |
| Water | 1 1/4 cups | warm, not hot |
Method
- Warm 300 ml of water to about body temperature. Stir in the sugar and the yeast and leave it ten minutes, until it foams. No foam means dead yeast and no bread.
- Add the flour premix and 2 tbsp of the ghee. Stir with a spoon until it comes together, then knead in the pot or on a clean stuff sack for five minutes. The dough stays a little tacky.
- Cover and let it rise somewhere warm for an hour, or until it has roughly doubled. Cold weather doubles that time; set it near the fire, not in it.
- Grease the dutch oven with the last of the ghee, shape the dough into a round, and drop it in. Let it sit twenty minutes while the fire burns down.
- Bake with coals under and on the lid, roughly one third below and two thirds on top, for 30 to 40 minutes. Rotate the pot a quarter turn every ten minutes so it does not scorch on one side.
- It is done when the top is browned and it sounds hollow when you knock on it. Let it cool before slicing or it tears.
Oat flour makes a soft, slightly sweet loaf that stays moist for two days in a pack, which matters more in camp than at home. It also has no gluten of its own, so a loaf built on it alone comes out dense and crumbly. The wheat flour and the two tablespoons of vital wheat gluten are what give the dough something to hold onto while it rises.
This is basecamp bread, not trail bread. It needs an hour of rising and a bed of coals, so it belongs to the night you are staying put. Ghee replaces the butter because it sits in a jar at ambient temperature without turning, and the dry premix means the only measuring you do in camp is the water.
Packing
Combine both flours, the gluten, sugar, and salt in one bag at home. Yeast rides in its own packet so it does not sit against the salt. Ghee goes in a screw-top jar.
Variations
- Swap the sugar for an equal amount of honey, stirred into the warm water.
- Press rolled oats onto the wet top of the loaf before baking for a crust with some texture.
- No dutch oven: bake it as flat rounds in a greased skillet over low coals, five minutes a side.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/yummy-recipe-very-little-bother-oat-bread