Fresh, Hot Bread at Beda Stockmen’s Hut

Well, I’ve published photo stories before about baking bread in the Australian outback.

On this trip, for the sake of convenience, I took prepackaged bread mixes. The pack includes the flour, salt, bread improver and a foil pack containing the yeast. A large coffe mug of water, filled to the brim, is just right.

Generally, I use the camp oven (dutch oven), which is a cast iron pot with a cast iron lid, but this time I used a large aluminium pot. The reason? On this trip I took prepackaged bread mix that comes in 600gm packs, too much for the small camp oven.

Nicky and I were camped in an abandoned stockmen’s hut at Beda on South Gap Station in outback South Australia.

The mix was too large for the camp oven so I used a large pot. The stove's flue was broken so I cooked the bread on top of the stove.

It’s been a good hut in it’s day but sadly is deteriorating with age. About half of one side of the gable roof is without iron and the other side is missing a sheet, right over the stove. It rained while we were there, but that’s another story.

The stove is a Metters Adelaide. A couple of the rings are missing, but worse, the flue is broken and jammed, so I couldn’t get the oven hot.

Letting the fire burn out I used the warmth of the oven to speed up rising the bread dough, knocking it down for a second rise.

Then it was time to get the fire going again and bake the bread on top of the stove, in the large pot.

About 15 minutes and the aroma of fresh, hot bread wafted around the old stockmen’s hut. Removing the pot lid it was clear that the top of the loaf wasn’t going to bake and brown like that.

I guess I’d over risen the loaf because it sunk a bit upon baking, but that’s OK.

Fresh, hot loaf of bread

So I got the half baked loaf onto the bread board and put it back in the pot, upside down. The pot has a large champher around the bottom so the loaf didn’t touch the bottom surface, which was probably a good thing. Another 5 minutes and I reckoned it must be done. And, sure enough, it was.

A little bit burnt on the bottom and just a little black up one side, it turned out to be an excellent loaf of fresh, hot bread.

Slice of fresh bread, baked in outback Australia

These two outback adventurers had no butter so we spread the bread with Lesley’s home made, prize winning, raspberry jam.

We had no butter but Lesley's prize winning raspberry jam went down alright.

Nothing like a good feed of fresh, hot bread when camping way out in the Australian outback, miles from anywhere and not too much fresh tucker, given that we travel on motorbikes.