I Baked Sourdough On a Fire In the Woods
- Aaron
- Aug 5, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 8, 2023
...and it actually kinda worked.
It's not rational. I wasn't well prepared. Frankly, it's not that great an idea. But I really really wanted to do it.
I backed into our lot and turned the car off. Every spot around us and on the way in was filled up. They had their fires going, their butane stoves and barbecues, the smell of hot dogs and hamburgers filled the air. Andrea and I hadn't been camping in about two years since camp grounds were off limits in 2020 and then booked up immediately all 2021, so we were anxious to hurry up and slow down.
We popped the trunk, cracked open a couple beers and set up our camp. As soon as the tent was up and the fire started, I mixed the active starter with pre-measured flour and water. The plan was to make a simple Country White loaf like we have in our SOURJOE recipes... but in the woods.
One of the key things you need to bake sourdough is an oven, so this was the biggest challenge I faced if I were to bake in an open fire. Some might say, "Just don't try to bake a loaf of sourdough in the woods, then, idiot." To them I say, "I bet you're fun at parties."
I had this itch, and it needed to be scratched. If you've ever baked bread in a dutch oven, you know that for the second half of the bake the lid is removed to allow steam and residual moisture to cook off and the gelatinized starches on the surface crust to caramelize and harden. How is one to do that when your heat source is an open fire? Well, I had a hypothesis, that could only be proven in practice.
After the autolyse I added the salt and some extra bassinage water, mixed it in thoroughly, and let it bulk ferment on the picnic table while we cooked dinner and listened to music as the sun began descending behind the trees. I got that giddy first-time-making-sourdough feeling when I saw the dough rising in the container. I've made sourdough a million times but watching something so ordinary in an environment I've never seen it or even expected it to be in was so refreshing. Or maybe it was that third beer in the thirty degree weather.
I ended up putting the whole container into the cooler overnight in the middle of bulk fermentation. This is perfectly fine to do as long was when you pull it out to let it come to room temp you factor in that time into the bulk, otherwise you can risk overproofing it (foreshadowing...)
Now we could focus on dinner and then, more importantly, s'mores and spooky stories.
The next morning we booted up the fire again and made coffee and breakfast. Obviously, the first thing I did was pull the dough out of the cooler. It was a cool morning, which in the summer that means twenty degrees, but at least the sun hadn't breached the top of the trees yet. We had coffee and breakfast and I could tell bulk was done. Here we go!
Of course, something always needs to go wrong, otherwise I wouldn't have planned it. I forgot a proofing basket. New challenge. This dough is ready to be shaped, what am I supposed to do with it? "Probably should just give up, it's over," some might say. To them I say, "Who hurt you?"
Luckily, when you're as scatter-brained and disorganized as I am, you're used to coming up with plans on the fly. I grabbed a towel, liberally floured it, shaped the dough in the air and cinched it up like I was hanging cheese curds. The fire was dying down and we had a couple activities planned for the day so I knew I had to cool it down. I snuck our one wooden spoon through the knots and hung it on a couple stacked cans and the carton of milk in the cooler. Problem solved.
After some time at the lake and a big hike, I started up the fire again and put both sides of the pan down to get smoking hot. When I pulled the loaf out of the cooler I noticed the bottom was wet! God laughs when we make plans or whatever. The ice had melted enough that a layer of water had gathered on the bottom. I unwrapped it to check the damage but luckily it wasn't so bad. I breathed a sigh of relief, added some more flour, re-tied it and hung it up between our two lawn chairs until the pans were ready.
Once the pans were smoking, I removed the shallow bottom one off the fire and set it to the side. I unwrapped the loaf and noticed how voluminous it was.
"Damn," I thought, "over-proofed."
But, I was here, here I was, so I dumped it into the pan, used one of the steak knives to score a cross in the top, put it back overtop of the fire and put the deep pan lid on top. I quickly put a couple burning logs on top to keep the heat even and set the timer.
Man, that was a long twenty minutes. When my watch finally beeped I swept the logs and ashes off the top and removed the lid.
SUCCESS! I couldn't believe it! The shape was lacking but the damn thing grew! Look how happy I was!
Now for the hard part: keeping consistent heat around the top part of the loaf while simultaneously removing all the excess moisture. This was my big plan: put two sticks between the top and the bottom. That was it. I put more logs on top to keep the heat going and kept it baking for another twenty-ish minutes.
Here's what happened: not too much. The bottom burnt but I just scraped it off like mom and with the grilled cheese, amirite? But hey, a loaf of bread! Baked in the woods on an open fire. The top had a familiar good crust but the sides where the air vented was definitely lacking structure. The interior cooked all the way and was sweet and delightful. There needs to be way more even heat coverage for it to bake properly. Still though, awesome first try. I would have had a shot of the crumb but we didn't bring a bread knife (what did you expect?) and I tried to tear it in half like Brian Ford. He does it much better. We tore it up fresh and soaked up a stew we cooked in that same pot about an hour later and it was delicious.
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