Between heaven and hell

Hellyeah, I love far from home office! Between all those video conferencing bla bla bla appointments there is always time for some crazygoing. "Oh, sorry guys, my mobile internet connection is about to break down, see ya t'morrow!". And off I go out of my cottage to fire up my all-time favourite Swedish Trangia storm stove which I pimped with an Optimus Nova multifuel burner some 10 years ago. Here around Zambia and Tanzania you find pure kerosene (petroleum) at every second fuel station for 0.5 EUR per litre and this stuff burns pretty cleanly. I can cook for 8-14 days on just half a litre of kerosene.

For two weeks now I'm experimenting with sour dough bread and it is just about time to test if baking bread would also be possible on the road without a real oven. Both test prove positive. The first subject has a higher portion of whole-grain wheat which I also used to start the sour dough and it raises excessively so that I have to put a stone on the lid. In this first round I use a flat stone deflector to scatter the flames in order for the dough not to burn at the bottom of the pot. Works well but baking time is nearly 1.5 hours and consumes around 40 grams of kerosene. But!! This first camping bread from a rather soggy dough is far the best of all I have baked so far! Unbeaten in juiciness, aroma, texture, satisfaction! Cut a slice, apply olive oil, salt ... and off you go straight to heaven.

The second subject is a pure white wheat dough which is more reluctant to raise – probably due to the sour dough having been started with whole-grain flour initially – but now my deflector shield is a thin metal piece cut from a broken kitchen grater. The dough is smaller and the bread is finished after almost 30 minutes. A bit too hot from the bottom but I also powered the stove more than before. You should never adjust two parameters at the same time in an experiment ...

On the road this procedure will be pretty straight-forward: Arriving at the designated campsite I will be putting a freshly built dough under the bonnet to accompany the warm engine over night. In the mornings during camp breaking I will leave it on the stove and enjoy crunchy orgasms during the day and the following evening. Hellyeah!Read more