CAMP BREADS

[Buck Conner1]

CAMP BREADS Over the years of spending weekends, vacation time we were living the life in the buckskinning events. As time passed we became more involved in the history and what life was really like. Documented research was the way to go (we had piles of articles, books, pictures of original equipage and anything related to the period or subject).

The first recipe is from an 18th century cookbook for Keepsake Biscuits. Keepsake Biscuits These biscuits were intended to keep long enough to provide bread for the extended journeys of the time. I have kept KS biscuits for several weeks but after the first day or so they are better if they are heated over a fire. They can also be broken into chunks the size of the last joint of your thumb and cooked with meat for dumplings or cooked with fruit for a cobbler. It is unlikely that even one KS biscuit ever got baked in the rocky mountains but it is remotely possible that someone fresh from his mama's kitchen could have hauled some a couple of thousand miles to the mountains. Let your conscience be your guide. Regular biscuits are very easy. Mix about 1/2 cup of any liquid fat... bacon grease, melted lard, butter, cooking oil... with about 1 1/4 cups liquid...water, milk, beer... and add to about 3 cups self-rising flour and stir into a damp dough. Pinch into balls about the size of golf balls and flatten between your palms.

Cook them any way you want...in a Dutch oven if you brought such a thing to the mountains, in a skillet over a slow fire (turning as needed), in a skillet inclined before a fire (turning as needed), or even on a flat rock before the fire. They can even be cooked in a regular house oven at 400 degrees for about 10-12 minutes. A rope of dough can be curled around a stick and toasted over the fire but I have never had very good luck with this method...making the rope not much bigger than a pencil might help. Somebody help me on this. KEEPSAKE BISCUITS (another variety). 1 quart milk or cream - I use half and half 1 & 1/2 cups butter or lard 2 tablespoons white sugar 1 heaping teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cream of tartar 110 cups all purpose flour - NOT self rising Cut the butter into the dry ingredients, reserving about three cups of the flour. Add the milk and mix in enough of the reserved flour to make a stiff dough. Roll out between 1/2 & 3/4 inch think and cut into biscuits - or roll into balls the size of small eggs and flatten into biscuits. o> Place fairly close together (they hardly rise at all) and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 to 25 minutes, or only until the bottoms are lightly browned. If you cook them until the tops look like regular biscuits they will be hard as Chinese arithmetic. The excessive fat will make them look (and be) gummy, but they will be fine when cool. This recipe makes about 40 biscuits. NOTE: AS THE RECIPE SAYS DO NOT OVERCOOK. GOLDEN BROWN IS TOO MUCH, REPEAT, TOOO DONE. COOKED BROWN THEY WILL BE HARD AND CRUMBLY. NOT GOOD!! TAKE MY WORD FOR THIS.

 

[Decay]

Buck: An old thread but still relevant in my world. The recipe says 110 cups of flour! Tell me this is a typo and what is the correct volume. Thanks

 

[deermanok]

Judging by the volume of the other ingredients, maybe that's correct.

 

[BuckDoeHunter]

Just enough flour to make a stiff dough. That's what the online recipes call for.

 

[Decay]

110 cups is 29 pounds!!!