Easy Australian Damper
"Damper is a traditional Australian bread. There are probably as many variations as there are people to cook it! This recipe comes from the Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook “Muffins, Scones and Breads”. This is a very useful recipe for those times when you want to make bread, but don't have time to use yeast. Damper has a hard crust and a fairly close texture. Its not a light bread (not the sort of bread you'd use to make dainty cucumber sandwiches, for example!), but it is tasty and is also good toasted.
I have found various surces of information about Damper on the internet and learned that originally Damper would have been cooked in the ashes of a bush fire. The ashes were flattened and the Damper was placed there to cook for 10 minutes. Then the Damper was covered with ashes and coked for another 20-30 minutes. The Damper was cooked until it sounded hollow when tapped.
This recipe was posted for Zaar World Tour 2005."
photo by Lavender Lynn
- Ready In:
- 1hr
- Ingredients:
- 6
- Yields:
-
1 round
- Serves:
- 4-6
ingredients
- 525 g self-raising flour (plus extra for top of bread)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons caster sugar (superfine)
- 40 g butter
- 125 ml milk (plus extra for top of bread)
- 310 ml water (approximately)
directions
- Pre-heat oven to 375F / 190C /gas mark 4.
- Sift flour, salt and sugar into a large bowl, rub in the butter.
- Stir in milk and enough water to mix to a sticky dough.
- Turn dough onto a floured surface, knead until just smooth.
- Place dough onto a greased baking tray and press into a 16cm round.
- Cut a cross in the dough, about 1cm deep; brush with a little extra milk then sprinkle with a little extra flour; bake for about 45 minutes; lift onto a wire rack to cool.
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Reviews
-
This amounts to a giant baking-powder biscuit/scone. It's quite good and wholesome and looks like something that could have been baked on a campfire. Self-rising flour seems a little out of place here; maybe someone can explain. Made for Zaar World Tour 5.
RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
Mrs B
Worcester Park, Surrey
I live with my husband and 2 cats in Worcester Park; a quiet typical 1930s suburb (which no one has ever heard of!) about 12 miles South West of London.
I'm a fair weather gardener and as my husband is a vegetarian I grow a few easy vegetables, such as tomatoes and peppers, mainly in containers. My husband loves growing flowers, the brighter the better, and we have a pretty garden as a result. Our cats, Araminta and Purrl, like it too!
I do a lot of cooking and try to keep our diet as healthy and varied as possible. Although I work full time, I use very little in the way of pre-prepared foods. This is partly because of the limited choice of vegetarian meals, which I think are overpriced anyway; but mainly because I like to know what goes in my food!
I love using the Internet for all the great ideas it gives me. Last year I participated in the Zaar World Tour (under my previous public name Caroline Blakey), which was great. Mr B and I tried lots of new foods and discovered new favourite meals. Researching recipes for the Tour was really interesting, however as I didn't have time to try them all, some were posted untested. I'm still working my way very slowly through them. To make matters worse I keep seeing other recipes I want to save and have also participated in Zaar world Tour II. So many recipes, so little time to make them!
<img src="http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b112/kzbhansen/Banners/Animation3.gif">
My 'rules' for posting recipes are a) if I wouldn't make a particular recipe, I won't post it and b) if my husband wouldn't eat it, I won't post it. This means that all my recipes are vegetarian friendly.
As you will see from the number of recipes saved in my cookbooks, I particularly enjoy making jams and chutneys; I'd say it was one of my favourite hobbies. We always have a good supply of home preserves; my friends and work colleagues are well supplied too.
If we won the lottery (say £5m, as a good number) we'd like to give up work, move to the country and buy a place with a bit of land. In my dreams this would be a manor house or old vicarage, with a walled garden, an orchard where I could keep hens, a vegetable garden, etc, etc, etc! In my more realistic moments (the £1m win perhaps) I would like to run a B&B, perhaps offering Vegetarian taster weekends. Luckily it costs nothing to dream.......I’d also love more time to read, do embroidery, learn a language, see more of the countryside; and of course play on Zaar.
