baking – BackCountry Cuisine

Jalapeño Cheese Bread

November 4, 2018 by Dustin Dawson Leave a Comment

There is nothing quite like having a freshly baked bread when you are backpacking. Baking in the backcountry is not as hard as it seems. Quick bread like Bisquick is pretty easy to make. Add in some cheese and maybe some bacon and you have an incredible meal! If you use a stove like the Epicurean Esbit stove from Jon at Flat Cat Gear, the process is almost foolproof. At $32, just for the stove, it is not cheap, but it works! You will also need a pot support, but you can make that out of hardware cloth for very cheap.

Check out the bread making process in action!

Recipe:

1 cup bisquick or Pamela’s gluten free baking mix
1/2 cup coarsely cut cheese
1 tsp jalapeños (adjust to taste)
How about adding some bacon? 1/4-1/2 cup

Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions!

Eat Well!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Lava Cake with the Bobcat Stove system

October 4, 2015 by Dustin Dawson Leave a Comment

It was pretty incredible. We hiked 10 miles up into the three sisters wilderness, set up camp, swam in Husband lake, then made a great meal of Tuna casserole. Did it stop there? No way! Using my ultralight baking setup I cooked up a chocolate cake to have at sunset! Ultralight backpacking has never been better. You heard me right, baking and ultralight in the same sentence!

I have been baking in the backcountry for over 20 years, but I stopped a few years ago because I went ultralight. The extra 3 pounds were just not going to fly in the ultralight pack! Now, Jon over at Flat Cat gear has created a system that works so well, and is so light, I can’t imagine not baking on every trip. My baking kit weighs only 4.6 oz. for my 2-3 person baking setup, or only 2.9 oz for my solo kit.

2-3 person kit:
3.6 oz Fat Daddio 5in x 2in pan with rim cut off
0.5 oz Flat Cat gear Epicurean Stove (esbit stove)
0.5 oz Felt hat for top of cook pot

You can get this whole kit from Jon for $50. For that price he trims the rim off the pan for you. It is a pain to do it, and he only charges $7.50 for it.

Solo kit:
2.2 oz Fat Daddio 3 in x 3 in pan with rim cut off
0.5 oz Flat Cat Gear Epicurean Stove (esbit stove)
0.2 oz Felt hat for top of pot

The solo kit is a little cheaper at around $40 from Jon at Flat Cat Gear.

For the simplest of “lava cakes” you can get packaged brownie mix or chocolate cake mix. The recipe below is a gluten free recipe that I came up with.

1/4 cup flour (Bob’s Red Mill gluten free baking mix)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter powder
5 Tbls cocoa powder
1/4 cup peanut butter powder
2 Tbls powdered egg
1/2 tsp salt

Add all ingredients into a bowl and mix well. Try to break up the clumps of the different powdered ingredients. I put them through a mesh strainer and that works really well. To fit the 5″x2″ pan use all of the powdered mix. For the smaller pot only use 3/4 cup of powder.

In camp use just enough water to barely make it flow. I put parchment paper at the bottom of the pot to make it much easier to remove. The paper does not register on my 0.1 g accuracy stove, so that is pretty light and well worth it. Just be sure to pack out the paper!

I hope you enjoy the baked goods in the backcountry! Eat well!

Dustin

Baking with Tea lights – Fail!

June 8, 2014 by Dustin Dawson Leave a Comment

Backcountry-Kitchen-4

Meal of the Week: Pesto Knots

Basic Yeast Dough

1/2 package active dry yeast

1/2 cup warm water

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1 tsp olive oil

1 1/2 cups flour

When you are about 30 minutes from your campsite, take a break on the trail and mix up your dough. Add the water to the yeast and sugar in a zip lock bag and let sit for about 5 minutes. Ideally, you have a sunny rock you can put the starter on to warm up. After the five minutes you should notice some foam in the bag. That is the yeast getting going. Add the flour into the ziplock bag and kneed carefully so you don’t break the bag. Once the dough has started to form and it is pulling away from the bag, take the dough out of the ziplock and kneed a little longer in your hands or on another larger plastic bag. Once it seems that all the flour has been well combined, put it back into the ziplock bag and throw it in your pack for the remainder of the hike.

Once back in camp, you can take out your dough, and divide the dough into about 6 pieces. Each piece should be flattened into a small round pancake about 3-4 inches in diameter. Put about a teaspoon of pesto in the middle and wrap it up, pinching the dough together to make a ball.

Place all 6 pesto knots in the pan and set up your oven. If you are patient, it is best to let the knots rise for 20 more minutes before baking. I am usually not patient, and they still turn out great, though a little more dense. Bake for about 30 minutes. You should start to smell the bread baking after about 20 minutes. If you have left over pesto, I spread a little on top of the hot knots. Enjoy!

Gear Corner

I have been baking for years in the back country. By far the best baking system I have ever used is called the Outback Oven by Backpackers Pantry. While it certainly does not fit in to the Ultralight system(9.5oz in addition to the rest of your pot and stove kit), it is very light weight and works very well. I am currently working on a lighter version of the Outback Oven

Backing with three tea light candles, just did not work. It got hot enough to create a great environment to rise the dough, but not hot enough to bake. I switched over to a tea light alcohol stove with only 1/4 oz of alcohol. I burned that off, then let the whole set up sit for 5 minutes to keep baking. Then I pulled everything apart and put another 1/4 oz of fuel in the stove and cooked again. In the end it did work, but the stove still got too hot and started burning the “oven” a bit. I have some modifications in mind to try and make this system work, so I will report back in a few weeks and let you know what progress I made.

Tip of the Week

Often you want small ziplock bags for yeast or sugar or spices. To make small ziplock bags at home, take a snack size ziplock and cut it in half. I use packing tape to seal up the cut end and now I have a small ziplock!

Enjoy your time out on the trail!

Dustin