dry baking vs. steam baking

[Diane Pinkers]

I've done some steam baking, a la Sarah's instructions at http://www.trailcooking.com. The dry baking looks very intriguing, but I have no interest in Esbit cooking. The steam baking I have done has been with just a regular alcohol 12-10 stove, no "simmer" adjusters, and with smaller muffins. I've used Reynolds muffin cups and stacked them, filled the stove as much as possible, steam baked them until the stove blew out, then popped the pot in a cozy. Moist muffins in about 15-20 minutes.

The larger pan would need longer baking times, would it not? If I continued with my steam baking set-up, which keeps the cups off the bottom of the pot, didn't put any water in it, used the simmer felt I just got from Dan Yeruski, do you think I could get muffins dry-baked in about 20 minutes or so? 50 minutes is just a rather long time to be sitting around, staring at the pot, wanting to eat. Pizza on the trail, though….

I'm envisioning being able to produce GF bready things for lunch by cooking it in the AM while still in camp, carry it in the cook pot to protect it, then be able to smear with PBJ or hummus or whatever for lunch. GF flat bread, anyone?

[Stuart R]

To dry bake, you need a stove that has a low simmer and an aluminium pot with a lid. A titanium pot is guaranteed to burn. I use a gas stove, but a alcohol stove should work with a foil restrictor on top.
Cooking time depends on the thickness of the thing you are baking.
I bake flatbread 6" diameter, 3/4" thick for 7.5 minutes each side.
I also bake 'griddle scones' with dried fruit. These are 1" thick so I bake them for 10 minutes each side.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Diane,

Here is a video that I made showing how to dry bake 3 different ways: Esbit, Alcohol and tealights. I bake all of the time using titanium pots. The trick is that you need to control the temperature. Best regards – Jon

[Diane Pinkers]

Good video, Jon, thanks. I also found your comparison of steam baking vs dry baking. I've been peeking at your site off and on for years, but haven't quite been able to justify the extra pan for baking. This is making me think that lunches might be more enjoyable if I bake some bread at breakfast! Dry mix is less squooshable, and won't mold like pre-made baked goods.

[Stuart R]

"I bake all of the time using titanium pots."

Ah yes Jon, but then you have the cake mixture inside another pan in the titanium pot. I have tried this method and whilst it does give good baking results, the baking time is quite long at 30 to 40+ minutes which uses a lot of fuel.

I have been dry baking using a single non-stick aluminium pan whilst trying to minimize the amount of fuel consumed. I can bake the bread or scones that I previously mentioned using 4.0g or less of butane (the same as boiling one cup of water). Sometime I'll do some experiments with alcohol for comparison.

[Bob Gross]

It takes a Scotsman to prepare proper scones.

–B.G.–

[Anonymous]

"It takes a Scotsman to prepare proper scones."

And dehydrated haggis. ;0)

[Bob Shaver]

I use a caldera cone (alcohol stove) and an outback oven to dry bake. Trail designs has a new simmer ring which helps. It takes some trial and error. I use a titanium pot, sometimes with parchment paper. Some examples are on my blog.

[Bob Shaver]

Using the Caldera Cone (alcohol stove) with the Outback Oven is shown step by step in
this blog post:

http://backpackingtechnology.com/food-and-cooking/the-outback-oven-used-with-the-caldera-cone-stove-and-windscreen/

[Brian G]

I’ve just built a jumbo-sized caldera cone that I use for the kind of hiking and camping that requires less attention to pack weight — shorter trips, car camping, or trips where a vehicle might not be too far away.  Built the cone from Disposable aluminum turkey roaster pans.

The cone works with the roughly 1.5L pot that came with an inexpensive set of 4 nested pots and pans.  The smaller 850ML-ish pot fits nicely inside the big pot, on top of a coiled aluminum riser (leftover scrap from the turkey pans) and the bigger fry pan works as a lid for the bigger pot.  I use this rig with a remote stove extender.  My normal canister-top stove goes on a tripod, and is fed fuel from the braided wire tube from the remote gas cylinder (Iso-style; or tall Butane; or even Green Coleman).

This whole thing is intended to be used for campsite baking.  Tried it for the first time last night.  Used a commercial chocolate chip muffin mix; added more chips and a couple of tablespoons of cocoa; and 2 tbs of Nestle Nido dried milk.  Oiled the inner pot, added 1/2 cup of water to the mix above (the mix calls for 1/2 cup milk, the Nido and the water care for that), stirred, poured it all in the inner pot, closed things up and fired up the stove.

Recipe calls for a 400 degree preheated oven, and 12-16 minute (?  I forget) baking time.  Had zero clue how to do it in the camp oven, so I winged it.  Cooked at a low flame (but increased over time to “audible”) for 25 minutes.  Put a temperature probe on top of the aluminum pan/lid, and it eventually registered over 170F.  Steam was coming out of the lid at the end.  Turned everything off and let it sit, covered for 5 more minutes.

The end result was absolutely fantastic!  Can’t wait to did into something like this at basecamp after a long day of Hiking!

[Author]

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