Zen and the Art of Food: Off-grid Bread

Stove top Wok Oven

pie plate with vent holes

150 degree inside bread

I once read a book by an old miner. He would carry a large bag of flour to his cabin and the night before making bread he would pour water into the open bag of flour to let it soak in. In the morning he would lift out the wet dough to kneed into bread with his sour dough starter saved from the last batch. And let it sit most of the day to rise.

I am guessing that his cabin got rather cold by the time he returned from working or hunting. Mine does and I am not in snow country.

I have been doing this, but it does take a bit more flour that easily comes out with the wet flour. Enough to keep the dough from sticking to a spoon. But a moist dough is preferable to a dry dough.

I made a starter batch by simply leaving a ball of moist dough in a 'not too warm' place for several days. Or use active dry yeast to start a starter batch over night.

Do not use city tap water without Activated charcoal filtration! But Reverse Osmosis is much better. Chlorine kills bacteria. This is one reason why people have digestion problems. And fluoride is even worse!

http://www.breadworld.com/recipes/Sourdough-Starter-thinner-

SAVING STARTER
If you save a chunk of the bread dough and keep it in a cloth, it will last longer than the wet goo some people use. Lactic acid-producing organisms seem to thrive in a wet environment while acetic acid is produced more abundantly in a drier environment. Acetic acid (or vinegar) is the acid that gives sourdough much of its tang.

Just remember to keep feeding the starter every few days or even more often if the dough is wet. The bacteria eats flour even in the cold.

FLUFFY PAN BREAD
Mix up a new batch of dough the night before with the starter dough. Let it sit in the pan with oil on the bottom. Do not disturb the dough until you cook it with a very low flame until it smells good and ready to eat. Maybe longer.
Then turn it into pizza with sauce and melted butter. Or just eat it with soup.

Extraneousinfo about Sour Dough from “cultures for health” a PDF

A jello mold oven for cake or a pie pan in a wok or dutch oven should work even better than the small pan with lid that I have been using.