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Damper (Bush Bread Baked in a Covered Pot)

Name: Damper (Bush Bread Baked in a Covered Pot)
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Australian
Ingredients: 450 g self-raising flour; 1 tsp salt; 30 g butter; 300 ml water; 1 to taste butter; 1 to taste golden syrup; 1 tbsp roasted ground wattleseed

Australia's bush soda bread: flour and water, baked once the fire has burned down to coals, in a covered cast-iron pot or in the ashes themselves. Irish soda bread will not wait for its oven; this one uses baking powder, which brings its own acid, so the dough can sit while the fire gets ready. There is no reading the heat of a fire, so doneness is judged by knocking on the base. Served with butter and golden syrup.

Ingredients

6servings

Dough (one 20cm loaf)
self-raising flour · or 450g plain flour with 4 tsp (16g) baking powder450 g
salt1 tsp
butter · optional; cold30 g
water · or milk, or beer; see Variations300 ml
To serve
butter1 to taste
golden syrup · or honey1 to taste
For wattleseed damper (optional)
roasted ground wattleseed · the loaf in the photograph; mix into the flour1 tbsp

Steps

Put a lidded cast-iron pot (22-24cm across) into the oven with its lid on and heat it at 220°C for 30 minutes. The dough can be made at any point in those 30 minutes; this bread is able to wait.
⏲ 30 min
Mix the flour and salt in a bowl. If using butter, cut it small and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse sand.
Make a well, pour in the water all at once and cut it through with a knife or spatula to bring it into one mass within 30 seconds. Wet and rough is fine.
⏲ 30 sec
Tip it onto a floured board and gather it with your palms two or three times only into a round about 5cm deep. Do not knead it. Dust the top with flour and cut a cross 2cm deep.
Take the hot pot out, line it with baking paper and put the dough in. Lid on, back into the oven for 20 minutes.
⏲ 20 min
Take the lid off and give it 15 minutes more to brown the crust.
⏲ 15 min
Knock on the base with a knuckle. A hollow sound means it is done; a dull one means 5 more minutes without the lid.
Cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then tear it or cut it thick and serve with butter and golden syrup.
⏲ 10 min

Variations

In the ashes: without a pot, the dough goes into a hollow raked in the coals and is covered with hot ash. Knock the ash off once it is baked.
Wattleseed damper (the photograph): the flecks in the loaf in the photograph are wattleseed, the roasted and ground seed of an Australian acacia. Mix 1 tablespoon into the flour.
The stockman's bread: the article credits its invention to a stockman travelling in the outback, and says it is usually served with dried meat or golden syrup.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

Over a campfire, in the pot: the original. Korean Wikipedia says damper is often baked on the coals of a campfire, and often in a Dutch oven. Let the fire burn down to coals, sit the cast-iron pot on them and put coals on the lid too. With coals underneath only, the base burns while the top stays pale. Allow 30-40 minutes and always knock on the base.
With milk or beer: the article says today's damper is usually made from flour and water, sometimes with milk. Milk in place of the water gives a softer crumb, and beer damper is common too.

Tips

Do not knead it. There is no reason to build gluten in this bread, and kneading only toughens it (dough and gluten).

More detail and the reasons why (6)

Same family as soda bread, different clock. Korean Wikipedia calls damper Australia's soda bread, and Irish soda bread writes the family rule into its first step: "This dough will not wait for you, so the oven has to be ready before it exists." It uses bicarbonate alone, so the acid has to come from somewhere else, which is exactly why the buttermilk is compulsory rather than optional. This bread has no oven waiting. The fire has to be lit and burned down to coals, and while that happens the dough waits.
So the acid goes in the packet. The article says baking soda may go in, but with water and bicarbonate alone you get what the soda bread warns about: "Plain milk gives you no rise and leaves unreacted soda behind, which tastes of soap". That is why this recipe uses self-raising flour, which choosing flour notes already contains baking powder, or plain flour with baking powder. The soda bread says as much when it sets itself apart from scones: a scone usually uses baking powder, which carries its own acid.
Why baking powder can wait. Pancakes spells it out: "Commercial baking powder carries two acids: one reacts on contact with water, the other only at the heat of the pan." Most of the lift comes from the heat, so losing a little gas during the thirty minutes the fire takes costs little. But as pancakes says, "Overnight is too far".
You cannot read a fire, so listen instead. Jiaohuaji says of cooking in the embers: "You cannot judge that heat, so allow more time than in an oven." A pot on coals colours from the bottom up, so the crust is even less of a guide, and the soda bread's warning applies in full: "Judging by colour alone gives you a dark loaf that is raw in the middle." Knock on the base and listen for a hollow sound.
Heat the pot first. Put the dough into a cold pot and it sits there while the base warms up. Heating the pot in the oven for 30 minutes is the oven's version of a pot sitting on coals (what your oven is doing).
Eat it the same day. No fermentation, so the soda bread's reason applies: "With no fermentation there are none of the acids and enzymes fermentation leaves behind, so it stales noticeably within a day." Leftovers are best cut thick and toasted.