Skillet Honey Butter Pull-Aparts
Dinner rolls baked in a cast iron pan over coals, brushed with honey butter while hot.
- calories
- 260
- weight
- 3.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 81
- protein
- 6 g
- serves
- 10, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 55 min
- water
- 240 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
- Campfire coals
- Dutch oven
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Bread flour | 2 1/2 cups | |
|---|---|---|
| Instant yeast | 1 1/2 tsp | instant, not active dry, so it goes straight into the flour |
| Potato flakes | 1/3 cup | the same instant mash you already carry |
| Powdered whole milk | 1/4 cup | stands in for the 1 cup of fresh milk |
| Powdered whole egg | 2 tbsp | or skip it; the rolls come out a little leaner |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Honey | 1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp | squeeze bottle |
| Butter | 5 tbsp | unsalted; 4 for the dough, 1 for the topping |
| Water | 1 cup | warm, not hot |
Method
- Mix flour, yeast, potato flakes, milk powder, egg powder, and salt in the pot. This is one bag if you premixed at home.
- Warm 1 cup of water until it is barely above body temperature. Boil it and let it cool if the source is questionable. Stir in 1/4 cup honey.
- Pour the liquid into the dry and work it into a shaggy dough. Add 4 tbsp of softened butter and knead in the pot or on a clean lid for about eight minutes, until it stops tearing when you stretch it.
- Cover and let it rise somewhere warm until roughly doubled. An hour in sun, two in cold. Near the fire, not on it.
- Grease a 10-inch cast iron skillet. Divide the dough into ten balls and set them in a ring with one in the middle. Let them puff again, about 30 minutes.
- Bake with coals: skillet on a bed of coals, lid on, more coals on the lid, roughly twice as many on top as below. Rotate pan and lid a quarter turn every 8 minutes. Done in 20 to 25 minutes when the tops are brown and a roll pulled from the edge is dry inside.
- Melt the last tbsp of butter with 1 tbsp honey and brush it over while the rolls are still hot.
This is a real yeast bread, so it needs time rather than skill. The potato flakes are why it works in camp: they hold water in the crumb and keep the rolls soft for a day even after a rough bake over uneven coals. Bread flour matters too, since the extra gluten tolerates the sloppy kneading you will do on a picnic table.
Fresh milk and a fresh egg do not travel, so the dough is built from milk powder and egg powder with plain warm water. Honey goes into the dough as well as the topping, which feeds the yeast and gives you enough sugar for browning under a lid where you cannot see anything. Keep more coals on the lid than under the pan, or the bottoms burn before the tops color.
Packing
Premix flour, yeast, potato flakes, milk powder, egg powder, and salt into one sealed bag at home. Butter in a small tub, honey in a squeeze bottle. Both keep for a weekend without a cooler.
Variations
- No egg powder is fine. The crumb is slightly tighter and nobody notices under the honey butter.
- Coarse salt on the topping turns them from sweet to something to eat alongside chili.
- Same dough, flattened into a disc and cooked lid-off on a griddle, gives you flatbread if the coals are too hot to control.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/honey-butter-dinner-rolls