Big Sur

Rhiannon flatbread: flour, oil, salt, water and a hot pan

Flatbread was one of the food highlights for us during our month at Rhiannon. On the road we crave quick and easy fresh bread. Flatbread is the perfect camping solution, but a couple of less than successful attempts had put us off.

Enter Helen’s recipe, which makes great bread with ingredients that you can find in even the dustiest of roadside tiendas. No need for baking powder or to wait and let the dough prove. The secrets seem to be the hot water, which keeps it light, and the oil, which means you can dry fry.

Ingredients
To make 10 flatbreads

–     3 cups of flour (white or wholemeal, a mix works well)
–     A few pinches of salt
–     Couple of drops of oil
–     1 cup of hot water (not quite boiling)

Optional: any dried herbs/spices you have available – oregano, rosemary or cumin work well, or add cinnamon and panela to make a sweet version.

Method

–     Mix the flour, salt and oil together in a bowl.
–     Slowly add the hot water and knead to an elastic dough.
–     If the mixture is still wet, add flour until it stops sticking to your hands.
–     Roll the dough out into one big shape, about 1/2cm thickness. If you’re camping, lay out some plastic bags on a flat surface.
–     Spread the dough on one side with a thin layer of oil.
–     Roll the dough up into a long sausage shape.
–     Slice the sausage up into 10 (or however many breads you want to make)
–     Roll out each bread individually into the thickness you want – about ½cm for chewy, naan style bread; or thinner for tortilla style.
–     Dry fry in a hot pan until it browns.

South African stickbread

If you have a campfire, then stickbread is a delicious and easy variation on the flatbread recipe. It comes courtesy of the Rhiannon South African contingent, Jaco and Stefan, who cooked an amazing meal for us one night of stickbread and veggie kebabs.

You can also try the recipe with beer instead of water – easy bread with just beer and flour!

South African stickbread: just add campfire

Use exactly the same recipe and method as above, but once you have rolled up and sliced the bread “sausage”, simply skewer each bread onto a fresh, green stick…

…you should end up with something that looks like a bread barbell.

Hold the stick over the embers and rotate. Once it’s cooked, the bread will slide off, and break into crispy, pastry-like layers. Buen provecho!