Campfire Bread in the Dutch Oven. pudding . Plow Point Tarp Shelter.

Well, morning folks, and welcome back. I'm out with Maggie today on a very windy day, thus the tarp. I'm going to be lighting a fire shortly, and I'm going to be doing some cooking today. I recently won a new Dutch oven in a competition, and I've been itching to try it out. It's a lovely little Petromax one liter, or I think it's 1.1 liter Dutch oven. And as you probably know, I'm a big fan of cast iron anyway. So I thought I'd come out today and cook some bread. So here it is. It's a lovely little thing. Weighs just over two kilograms. And if you saw my last video, which was on pots and pans, this featured in it. Yeah, holds about 1.1 liters, and works in exactly the same way as other Dutch ovens, where you put it over coals, you can pile coals on top, and use it as an oven to bake in, or to roast in, or you can hang it up over your fire and use it as a pot to cook like a stew or something like that in. The lid, as with most Dutch ovens, also doubles as a frying pan. And I'll be using that a little bit later as well, because I've got something that I want to cook in there to go with my bread. So yeah, that is it. I'm really excited to try it out. I'm going to get this on to warm up near the fire, just while that's building up, and then burning down to coals. And then I'll get on with making the bread. So the bread recipe I'm using is exactly the same one I use at home. I've just scaled it down, because obviously my Dutch oven is only small. I'll put the recipe in the description box below as normal, but I'm basically using a quarter of it. So I need 125 milliliters of water, which is quite hard to gauge in my cup, because the markings start up 500. But yeah, I think that's about a quarter of the way up to the 500 mark. And that water needs to be tepid, or just lukewarm. So I'm going to put that near the fire, just to warm up a bit. It doesn't want to be too hot. If it's so hot that you can't put your finger in it, it's too hot. You'll need to cool it down a bit. Okay, so just warm water. Okay, the water is warm. I'm now going to add some yeast and sugar. Again, I'll put the quants in the description box below. And basically what's going to happen here is the water will activate the yeast, and then the yeast will feed on the sugar. It's all a bit complicated and scientific, but that is what is going to cause the bread to rise. Put the lid on and just pop it out of the way for a minute. Right, in this bag here, I've got the rest of the dry ingredients. So that's strong white bread flour, plain flour, and salt. The full recipe for this is quite easy to remember. I don't need to sort of like look it up anymore. You know, it's dead easy. It's a pound of plain flour, a pound of bread flour, an ounce of yeast, an ounce of sugar. It calls for an ounce of salt, but I never put that much in because it always seems too much. And roughly a pint of water, okay? So I've reduced that down. Like I said before, the bread I'm making today is only using a quarter of those measurements. But if you wanted to make a loaf at home or you're going to do it in a large Dutch oven, those are the quants you can use. So it's easy. It's a pound, a pound, an ounce, an ounce, an ounce, and a pint. So I put this in a nice big Ziploc bag just so that I can mix it all in here and not make such a mess. You know, it's a lot easier to do this on your kitchen side at home because you can spread out and you can work on the work surface. But I'm going to attempt to do this in this bag here just to try and keep the mess in one place. So I've made a kind of well in the middle of the flour. And I'm just going to pour this in a little bit at a time and then draw the flour into it, mixing it in the middle, if you see what I mean. I'll just keep adding the liquid. You may need to adjust these quants. Incidentally, you know, I've allowed for a quarter of a pint of liquid in here, but different flours work in different ways. And, you know, you may end up having to adjust it. It may be slightly more, it may be slightly less, but you just have to gauge it. What you're after is a fairly stiff dough, actually, that you can work in your hands without it sticking to your hands too much. Oops, I've got a little foreign object in there. So yeah, just mix it in the bag until you've kind of got everything combined. And then you'll find you'll be able to reach your hands in, hopefully, and get it out without it sticking to everything and making a horrible mess. Okay, well, I've mixed that up, but to be honest, it's too wet for a dough. So what I'm going to do is add a bit more flour. I did bring some extra flour with me, and I'd suggest if you're going to do this in camp, do the same, because if you do put in too much liquid, you're going to need some flour so that you can get it back to the consistency you want. And obviously, if it's too dry, you can always add some more liquid. Okay, so that's starting to look a bit more like it, yeah? Little bits are sticking to my fingers, but it's not too bad. You start to get your fingers in it once it gets to that stage. You're going to need to knead it in a minute anyway, so you're going to have to get your fingers on it eventually. I just like to use a bag for that first stage when it's really sticky. Okay, I'm pretty happy with that. It's no longer sticking to my fingers, so it's time to knead it now. So the kneading process basically puts stretch into the dough and that's what makes it, when it cooks, it rises up and it becomes nice and bready, yeah? So really, the ideal thing to have here is a nice flat surface that you can really work the dough on. I've only brought my plate here, so that's going to have to do, but basically you want to fold it and sort of squash it, and you keep folding it and kind of rolling it on itself and just giving it a bit of a hard time, really. This is not so easy in a plate. I wonder if the back of the plate might be better. Yeah, that's better. You want to get your hands on it and use the back of your hand here to really push and get that yeast working and try not to get too much mud on it. The next stage is to prove it, and basically what that means is you've got to put it in a warm place and the yeast is going to start to work with the flour and the sugar and everything in there, and it's going to start to expand, and that's what you want. That's what makes bread fluffy and light inside, otherwise you end up with a flatbread a bit more like bannock. So in order for this to rise, I'm going to put this in the Dutch oven. That's why I've been putting it there near the fire just to warm up. The Dutch oven mustn't be too hot, so you just need it to be warm, warm enough to touch, and it's the temperature that's going to sort of activate the yeast and get it going, all right? I like to put some cuts in the top just to get that air inside here. This isn't your finished loaf. This isn't what it's going to look like because once it's proved once, I'm going to knock that back again, knock all the air out of it again, and then prove it a second time because I think that improves the bread hugely. So into the Dutch oven with it, just stick it in the bottom, put the lid on, and then put it back over near the fire where it can stay warm. Okay, let's take a look. Yeah, that's definitely risen. It's bigger than it was, so that means there is air in there, which is good. What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to knock all that air back out of it again. You can really just pound it, knead it again, make sure all that air is out again. Okay, so this time when I prove it, whatever shape I make now will be the finished shape of the bread because after it's proved, it's just going to go straight in to be cooked. So I'm going to make just a couple of light scores along the top, and that's going back in for its final prove. And just, yeah, keep an eye on it. And once it's doubled in size, it's ready. Okay, that is good to go. I'm happy with that. All right, that bread's had about 15 minutes, maybe. I'm going to take a little look. Oh, oh my God, look at that. Oh, she caught a bit on the bottom. But I'll tell you what, the top of that looks pretty good, doesn't it? I'm going to call that done. I'm going to take that off, but I'm going to put the lid straight back on again. Because I've got something else that I want to cook to have with this. And I'm going to use the lid as a frying pan. A couple of weeks ago, I received a thank you gift through the post from a couple of subscribers, Mark and Joe. They're off on a huge expedition to Lapland, and they wanted a Polish Lavu tent to take with them as their sleeping accommodation. And having watched the video I did on the modifications I did to my Lavu, they had a few questions, which obviously I was more than glad to answer. By way of thanks, they sent me an enormous black pudding. There was absolutely no need for it. You know, I willingly give out advice and help wherever I can, but it was very much appreciated. The black pudding is amazing. It's a McLeod and McLeod black pudding from Stornoway. And I believe it's probably the best in the world. I bought two slices of it with me today. So you can see kind of the diameter of this sausage. And the thing was probably this big. I mean, it was, there you go, am I in frame? There you go. It was probably this big. It was huge. So I took their advice on it and sliced it up and froze them in two slice portions. I've had some already. I had some at home with Tom and it is just amazing. It's really rich. And to be honest, one slice is probably enough, but I've got Maggie with me today. So she's going to have the other slice and I'm just going to fry these straight in the lid of the Dutch oven. Mark and Joe, thank you very, very much. Oh, that's just fit. Ooh. That came out well. I even remembered to bring some butter with me. So I can put some butter on my bread. Slice of black pudding on top of that. Doesn't get much better than that. Oh man. That is seriously good. Give this a try, mate. Here you go. What do you think of that? 10 out of 10? Yeah? Great. Well, Maggie and I are going to finish off this last bit of bread and then we're going to get cleared away, put this fire out, take everything down, pack up and head on home. But just before I go, I'd like to give a shout out to Sam and Georgie from Uncle's Eyebrows. And they'll know what that means. Take care and I'll see you soon.