Intro to Backcountry Baking

by Connor Chewning, Program Assistant/Climbing Wall Supervisor/Adventure Trip Guide

I started baking outdoors in a course that I took with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Going into the course, I wasn’t too worried about the quality of the meals that we were going to have, but I had no idea just how good we were going to be eating. By the third or fourth night of our mountaineering expedition, our instructors were teaching us how to whip up dough and let it rise for PIZZA NIGHT. I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical, but the pizza was amazing. The following days, we were learning how to make biscuits, cinnamon rolls, calzones, cake, pancakes, cornbread, dumplings and pretty much any kind of baked good you can imagine. Yes, I still occasionally dreamed of my favorite home-cooked meals, but I was loving what we were eating.

Baking has become an integral part of my cooking routine outdoors and that’s what I hope to share with you all today! Backcountry baking sounds like a complicated and messy task; however, once you try it, you’ll see that it’s not that difficult and is well worth the effort. The key is learning about the basics of bread making and the techniques of baking on a camp stove. Once you master the basics, it is then up to you to practice your skills!

Why bake outdoors?

• It’s a nice variation from the routine oatmeal or throw-it-all-in-a-bowl dinner.
• It’s fun and tasty. There’s nothing quite like a cheese stuffed biscuit on the morning of a rest day.
• The ingredients for baking are cheap.
• You’ll impress everyone on your trip.
• It’s not as hard as you might think!

Backcountry Cinnamon Rolls with cream cheese icing.

Considerations for baking

• Wash your hands: You are going to be mixing your hands in the dough. If they are not clean, you and everyone on your trip who can’t resist the smell of freshly baked bread will spend the rest of the day digging holes in the woods instead of hiking to that awesome swimming spot.
• Time: Baking does take more time than cooking a pot of oatmeal. I prefer to bake on days with a flexible schedule or rest days when we aren’t moving camp. Though after some practice, you will be able to make dough the night before and have a fresh set of biscuits ready for the crew on the morning of your alpine start.
• Nutrition/Energy: While super tasty, a load of cinnamon rolls isn’t going to keep you and your buddies fueled if you have a long morning of hiking ahead. Think about the level of protein and long-term energy in your meals when planning. Protein and cheese packed biscuits might be a better alternative, or you may want to save the baking for that evening at camp.
• There are no rules to baking outside: One of the coolest things that I learned while at NOLS is that you can make bread out of anything. You can mix in oats, cornmeal, whole wheat flour, mashed potatoes, cream of wheat, nuts and more in order to stretch your supplies and have more baking opportunities. My NOLS crew and I baked so much that we eventually honed in our skills and could make 1 kilogram of flour last for 10 days while baking at least once a day. It’s fun to experiment and see what happens!

The consistency of the dough determines the type of baked good

• Pancakes are easy to pour.
• Cake/brownie batter is a little bit thicker but will still pour easily.
• Cookie dough will form into wet globs.
• Bread dough is dry and won’t stick to your hands when it is finished.

Three ways to make your dough rise

• One: Quick-rise with baking soda: Choose this method when you get into camp late and need a quick dough. The baking soda activates with the heat of the stove and creates a rise while cooking. There is no need to wait for the bread to rise before baking. This method is great for pancakes, brownies, cakes and cookies.
• Two: Slow-rise with yeast: The preferred option for when you have plenty of time or are whipping up the dough the night before. This requires more prep as you will want to activate the yeast in warm water with sugar and add it into your dough for mixing. Then you’ll want to let the dough sit for a couple of hours in a warm spot to let it rise. This usually leads to the fluffiest and (I think) tastiest bread. Choose this method for regular bread, biscuit dough and pizza dough!
• Three: Combine one and two! Why choose one? You can add both yeast and baking soda as kind of a fool proof method to ensure that you get some growth in your baking yield.

Backcountry Tuna, Veggie and Cheese Dumplings.

Technique for baking on a camp stove

The important thing about baking in the outdoors is that you do not need a fancy convection oven to ensure even heating of your bread. In fact, an outdoor stove is probably tied with an Easy Bake oven as one of the worst appliances to bake with due to the difficulty you’ll encounter in achieving a low temperature and even heating. This doesn’t stop us! The way we get around this issue is to modify our cooking technique in three ways. I present to you the theoretical background and mathematical equations for achieving the perfect bake:

A simple stove hack+THE TOWER OF POWER+a twiggy fire=ultimate baking status!

• Find a way to operate the stove at the lowest temperature possible.
• With canister stoves, pretty much the only option is to turn the regulator down as much as possible.
• With white gas/whisper light style stoves, depressurize the canister to decrease the amount of fuel that is supplied to the flame and lower the temperature.
• Elevate the pan from the flame.
• Introducing the TOWER OF POWER in honor of one of the best American R&B-based horn section bands to exist. Essentially, we use the windshield to build a platform for our pan to sit on. This lets the heat disperse and heat the pan more evenly. To make the Tower of Power, roll up your aluminum foil windshield so that its diameter is less than that of your pan. Then fold the top edge inward in order to create a stable base for the pan.
• There is another method that you can implement to ensure even heating called the “Round the Clock” method. For this technique, you will offset the pan from the center of the stove and rotate every few seconds to ensure that the heat hits all angles of the pan. I personally find that the Tower of Power works for me and I don’t use this method too often; however, it is particularly useful for baking with a canister stove where you have less control of the heat.

‘Round the Clock Method. Photo by NOLS.

• Introduce heat from the top
• A “twiggy fire” is essentially a mini fire made from small sticks and twigs that you can build on the lid of your pan to add some heat to help cook the top of your baked goods. This is an optional step that makes the process a bit more precarious, but if done carefully adds a crucial step to cooking cakes, and brownies where the batter has a more liquid consistency and the items cannot be flipped.

Twiggy Fire. Photo by NOLS.

Now that you know the basics, you are ready to go out and get baking. It will take you some time to get used to working with the dough and figuring out what does and doesn’t work, but that’s all part of the fun! Remember that you aren’t on the Great British Bake Off and if you mess up along the way you can always salvage something edible from your bake!