Making a great Damper

I am often told that I make a really good Damper – I have been practicing for year’s and I still have the odd failure. My first attempts at cooking an authentic Damper cooked over coals weren’t too crash hot at all, so me being me, I had to find a way to practice my campfire cooking so that I was able to produce something that I was happy to share with others at the happy hour table.

How did I do this?

• By enlisting the help of my partner in crime and constructing a campfire pit at home!
• We regularly lit the ‘home campfire’ on weekends and began to experiment with not only damper, but curries, pizza, cakes and desserts.

The campfire is only as good as the wood you collect and good wood makes great coals that will retain their heat long enough for the dinner to cook in the camp oven, so always aim to have good solid iron-bark logs on the fire. If this isn’t available you can use heat beads, but the heat wont be as intense.

It is always best to pre heat the camp oven, although I must confess I dont always do this. Damper needs to be lifted up from the base of the camp oven, over the year’s I have used a few different things to do this. A cake or steamer rack that fits neatly inside the camp oven is ideal, have also used an upturned cake tin, sitting this inside the bottom of the camp oven and then placing the damper on top of that. I always dust my uncooked damper in flour and wrap it in foil before it goes in the camp oven as it is easier to remove once cooked.

Damper needs plenty of coals on the lid so that there is enough top heat to get it to rise, and just a few on the bottom and around the side. Try not to open and check its progress, although I have been guilty of doing this on more than one occasion. 15-20 minutes with good coals and plenty of top heat and your damper should be perfect.

Below is my Damper recipe modified from a camp oven cook book that I have had for year’s. The addition of the tomato sauce gives a hint of flavour and makes it that bit more interesting.

• INGREDIENTS
• 3/4 cup of milk
• 1 Tblspn butter
• 2 Tblspn Tomato Sauce
• 2 cups S.R.Flour
• 1 cup grated cheese
• 1/4 tspn salt
• METHOD
• Mix the flour, salt and butter until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
• Add 3/4 of the cheese
• Now mix the milk and tomato sauce together, saving a little of the milk to glaze the dough with, then add the liquid to the dry mix.
• When the mixture is a nice firm dough place it on a floured board and roll into a large round bun – dust with flour.
• Baste the top with milk and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.
• Wrap damper in foil being careful to leave room at the top so that cheese does not stick to the top, place it in a pre-heated camp oven and sit on a hot bed of coals with plenty of coals on the lid of the camp oven.
• 15-20 minutes later your fresh damper should be cooked and ready to enjoy!