**A Transatlantic Cooking Adventure: Exploring Australian Damper**

As I stood in my kitchen, staring at the small package from Australia, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and trepidation. "Down Under," as we affectionately call it, had sent me a mystery ingredient – a type of bread known as damper. This traditional Australian food was unlike anything I'd ever cooked before, and I was eager to learn more about its rich history and unique characteristics.

The instructions were scarce, but the enthusiasm from the Down Under crew was palpable. "It's supposed to be 48 minutes," they said, with a healthy dose of confidence. I nodded along, unsure what to expect. The heat in my kitchen was already reaching boiling points, so I decided to scatter the dough around the outside edge, where it would receive some much-needed ventilation. As the cooking time progressed, the aroma wafting from the oven grew more enticing – a savory blend of bacon, onion, and something mysterious.

The final act of the recipe unfolded like a dance: I took the damper out of the oven, allowed it to cool for a few minutes, and then sliced into it. The first bite was... intense. It was hot, almost too hot, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what was happening. But as I chewed, the flavors began to emerge – a subtle sweetness from the onion and a rich, smoky flavor from the bacon. And yet, despite its robust character, the dough itself remained surprisingly moist.

As I pondered the damper's texture, I couldn't help but think of my friends down under, who'd shared this recipe with me. What was it about Australian bush cooking that made them come together to create such an iconic dish? The answer, I realized, lay in the humble beginnings of damper itself – a bread traditionally cooked over an open fire, using nothing but flour, water, and a bit of ash for insulation.

I took another bite, and the crunch from the crust gave way to a satisfying chewiness. Suddenly, it was all coming together: the smoky flavor, the savory meat, and the subtle sweetness of the onion. It was like a symphony of flavors on my palate! I reached for the parmesan cheese, sprinkling it liberally across the surface of the damper. The result was nothing short of magic – a perfect balance of textures and tastes that left me wanting more.

As I wrapped up this culinary adventure, I couldn't help but think about the brave men and women who've served our country overseas. They may have been far from home, but their sacrifice has given us access to flavors like damper, which we might otherwise never try. So here's to the Aussie crew – thanks for sharing your recipe with me, and for introducing me to a world of culinary delights I'll be exploring for years to come.

**A Side Note on Hard Tack**

In the spirit of exploration, I decided to delve into another piece of historical cooking that shares some similarities with damper. Enter hard tack, an ancient bread that's been carried by sailors and soldiers for centuries. This dry, cracker-like biscuit was designed to be compact, durable, and – most importantly – long-lasting.

While it may not sound like the most appetizing thing in the world, trust me when I say that hard tack is a fascinating topic worth exploring. From its origins as a staple food for British sailors to its use by American soldiers during World War II, this bread has played a significant role in shaping our culinary history. Check out our video on hard tack for a deeper dive into its history and cultural significance – it's a wild ride that'll leave you craving more of these old-timey treats!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey folks y'all have seen me cook a lot of stuff in a cast iron skillet a grill even a dutch oven but have you ever seen me throw a loaf of bread right there in the hot ashes in the cold i haven't so you better stick around so you can figure this out because i'm needing some help hey thank y'all for stopping by camp on a beautiful day the lord has made he had hey they ain't much breeze old glory just sitting over there being so pretty she is and hey we know we have a lot of viewers all over the united states all over the world and we never take it for granted that you watch but we do have quite a large number of viewers that are in australia and new zealand who are we so honored to have you all but we got an email from janine just the other day from australia and she said you know kent i think y'all should maybe talk about doing you know maybe damper australian damper the traditional way some folks call it you know bush bread a long time ago years and years ago it was made with seeds and nuts and everything and they'd grind them down to make a dough and then there was just water and a little salt little flyer hey go to town good morning to the roland's family my name is janine and this is my husband david and this is our taste testing team this is murphy and this is echo hope you have a lovely day and enjoy making our australian damper and janine we thank y'all so much for the suggestion because i do like a challenge i went back and done my research folks they throw in this bread right into hot coals y'all have seen me do this to steak you know the caveman steak video but not bread dough oh my gosh i don't know what's gonna happen here but it was made really so popular many many many many moons ago from the aborigines and all the bushmen that were working down there and all the cowboys down in that country and there is a lot of cowboys in australia they call a ranch a station so hey this was something that they could make on the trail that was so easy but it was also easy to store you could break off a piece of that put it in your saddle bag put it in your coat pocket there's no refrigeration needed this is something that lasts a long time sort of like the hard tack video that we did but hey these folks are just so glad to have it so i got to wonder how come do they call it damper huh let's think on that just a minute it would dampen the appetite until you got something to come along later it's not going to just make you plum full but folks you can be sustainable you can get by on this stuff if you're out in the middle of nowhere or you just want to get in the backyard and you and the kids throw some bread in the fire and go to cooking so hey we're glad to try out this dish we'll see what happens have i ever cooked it before no so this is going to be a challenge but old kent is going to use his noggin today and we'll see what happens so to get started with this and folks there's not really a whole lot of recipe to this a long long time ago it's just flour maybe some powdered milk and water you could put fruit in it a lot back then they was putting some dried raisins if they could find them you could put onion in it you could put bacon in it ham sausage anything to make it a little more sustainable but when you do that folks this is not going to keep as long as it would if it was just straight pure like they made it from originality originality to start out with two cups all-purpose flour now so many people that i've seen that made this use what they call self-raising or self-rising flour but we're just gonna go with all-purpose and we're gonna start with four cups now it will increase as we go along because hey you just gotta go by feel that's what bread is always about to me how does the bread feel now we're gonna add a pretty good dab of baking powder because there is no yeast there's no more leavening action to this but we do want it to pop up just a little the salt that ken forgot had to run to the wagon to get i'd say about that much which is just right go ahead and give that a mix in with your hands now traditionally they would have used what powdered milk little salt maybe a little dab of flour and then some water that was it now we're going to start with canned milk because hey this is something that we use on ranches all the time because you don't have to have any refrigeration it'll keep forever and to me it has a really rich taste mikey a whale sort of right there in the bottom and we're going to start with what i'd call about half of this can which is let's see about that much pretty close it is now i just want you to go to fold in that over there in that milk and i know it's going to take some more but we need to just mix it as we go along that way we can sort of tell if we got enough or we ain't got enough one more time there's the other half of the first can because we want this to make a ball of dough that is really pretty dense in a way but still has a little moisture but doesn't stick to your fingers when you go to work in it so here comes a little bit more we're going to go with about a third of that one just keep folding it around till we can get a pretty good dough like i say that doesn't stick to your fingers and you can always just say oh that's too sticky we need some more flour so let me get over here in the flour can and this is when it becomes really a guessing game because when you add flour if you get too much then you gotta add more milk so like i said it's just by feel and touch it is we'll sift that in there so gently give it a little going over and i'd be liking that because you see that but there's nothing here much because we'll fly our hands it's not really sticking to this we can make us a good ball of dough out of this so let me get my hands on it get a little flyer here don't do that in the house and then i just want you to get it to needing it just to tad to where we can get it out of the bowl and everything is about the same now if you're cooking really a larger batch of this and most people that i've seen were it was six and eight cups of flour now that's a pretty good dab of damper it would be so we're going to set this right here get a cutting board over here fly it well dump it out there there it comes and then i want you just to flatten it out pretty good well y'all wasn't watching over there i don't got me eight or ten slices a thick cut bacon one yellow onion because a yellow onion gonna have a little sweetness and we're just gonna scatter this out here on it now traditionally remember this wouldn't have had this and like i said this won't keep eight or ten days just sitting out because you have meat and something in there else but make sure you get everybody in there and then i just want you to go to rolling it over and let's just go to kneading because we want to make sure that we get that bacon and that onion incorporated throughout everything so when you take a bite you get a bite of each one and every bite now i was thinking about hey this would be really good if we put like maybe like a cup of cheese in there grated cheese you know but when you're gonna throw this directly in the fire that cheese is gonna burn really quick and burnt cheese and me really don't get along well so i'm not gonna do that now i will go ahead and give you this little tip here now when people want to make this at home you could make it in a camp oven but when you can do this with the kids and you can think we can throw this in the fire but if you need to a practice run wrap this in full first then set it over there cookie one or two like that and then you can graduate on over there to the fire time i pull this out in a minute if it's black you'll think oh kent should have used the tinfoil too well folks we got her down there to about an inch and a quarter we needed it pretty well we did now i've got some coals that have burnt down because this really isn't going directly on coals as much as it is sort of hot ash but i'm going to go ahead and give you another tip right here before we go any further go ahead and turn this over flyer is sort of like an insulating barrier in this deal so we need to coat it really well top and bottom with flyer that way when we put it in there that burnt flour will peel off pretty quick turn it over on this side give it another good shaking of insulation and i'll meet y'all right over at the fire lesson number one i've already learned build your fire 30 minutes earlier than you thought and use littler sticks so you can ash the fire out quicker now we're just going to go ahead and peel some of these hot coals back over here and see if there's any ash left under there we'll see what happens here in just a minute go ahead and just keep raking the to one side oh that's what i like to see now you can see there's there's a few hot coals there but looking at the size of our bread in that little spot right there i think we're going to be in pretty good shape i'm going to go ahead and back this up some more so we ain't getting too much residual heat on the ends there and let's just oh that's hot how it is so i have never cooked this before in my life and i like bread but we're gonna throw it in the ash there and we're gonna see what happens so remember you got it dusted really good on both sides throw it right in there and let's go ahead now this is sort of like the caveman steak in a way because you can get no oxygen under here you've cut that off you may get some smoldering but you're not going to have a flame let's see if we can find some more ash to wake up there on top because we can rake off them big coals here in a minute i just want to give it a light coating and make sure you get them hot ones off there if you can and i know y'all be thinking we're crazy right now and you're telling me i think we are crazy i'm not going to eat that he'd have covered it all up with ash now i'd like to get me a little more right over here so we're going to throw that up on there try to move the hot coals off of it if we can you can see if there's any really big hot coals there we're going to try to get rid of them and i'll be acting like i'd be knowing what i'm doing but i really don't and when we get this all done it ain't going to be burnt plumb through the middle i don't think but it might be a little done on both sides but that too will peel off just make sure you can try to get most of them big coals offered and i see now that's probably going to go i'd say 30 to 40 minutes guessing now it's sort of how do you know it's done just like you do when you get a good watermelon know what i mean we're going to give it a good thump if it sounds hollow in there we call it a done deal and going to pull it off there and brush the ash off of it and we're partake in the beast well we're gonna let her cool off a minute we are i'd beats me i don't even know what to expect here i don't we was 48 minutes but when we started them coles was pretty close to it and i scattered them all the way back because it was pretty hot around this outside edge as cooking went on and things began to get a little less heat i brought them in closer and even right there probably the last 20 minutes i just piled it all up on top this piece of bread and let it go hey like i say we're 48 minutes i don't know what it's going to look like in there they say it's supposed to sound hollow when you thump it so i don't know big what do you think so i'm excited this is not memoryx this is live it's just a little little doughy there in the middle but you can see that bacon and onion i'm gonna go ahead and cut me a piece right here well shan here goes nothing sugar it's hot that first bite it was too hot for me to even tell you what it was like now i'm gonna go ahead and go on it's cooled a little bit there you can see the char everything bacon onion well it's different it is but the flavors there come out with the onion and the bacon you get just a little hint of that but the dough really isn't that doughy in here it's just still pretty moist what about like the outside the outside you don't really taste like oh it's burnt you get just a little bit of the smoky flavor to it there and a little bit of maybe the ash but hey made me want to do it down under australia we're going to get over here huh we're going to do the up and over from the down and under yes it is good it is now i can see where down there in the bush them old folks get together and little cowboys at a station or something had a big fire that night made coffee everything cooked supper next morning make that dough throw it over in there rake it up on top go do your chores come back because really when you've got all that ash on there you're insulating you're not really going to get the hot effect of the coals so hey to me we're going to let shan have a bite because i think she deserves oh the big says he would take one he said a little crunchy dad but it's not bad duker you got enough teeth to do this i'm getting bites that don't have onion sides in time out and mage there you go buddy duker you know one more now if you need a little extra help on this and it sure don't hurt it don't get you a temperature probe and you can check it all the way around looking for a temperature about 200 degrees that's about what i like bread but like i was telling you it's not really that it's so much undercooked as there's still a lot of moisture in there as this sets up so i mean that's pretty good looking brilliant and we're going to cut you off a piece but no huh this is these folks sent all this recipe up here we're going to let you have a bite get you some of that crust get you all of it it is good to go uh-huh but really the crunch is not that brad bad now you can keep you one of these when you get that off the fire if you want to it's good yeah rub that all the way around there sprinkle you some parmesan cheese on it you've even helped it some more but you couldn't like i say just put this in your pocket and store it because what it has meat in it it has onion in it so traditionally didn't have none of that it'd keep for a long long time well i want to thank the folks from down under down there to australia for sending me a little hint to try this brilliant i it was very challenging it was and i do like a challenge it was a good deal but as always i tip my hat to all our service men and women all the veterans that have kept old glory flying there in camp it is such a beautiful sight and we appreciate you one and all now folks get on in here come on back in here really tight what we're gonna do give you a great big old hug hold a little damper and we're going to dampen your appetite till you can get there and god bless you i'll see you down the damper trail hang on i got something in my eyeball i know you heard me mention it but i want you to be sure and check out our hard tack video there as well because hey it's something sort of old-timey traditional that you carry around your pocket for about 20 years and eat that stuff be sure and check it out it is a great videohey folks y'all have seen me cook a lot of stuff in a cast iron skillet a grill even a dutch oven but have you ever seen me throw a loaf of bread right there in the hot ashes in the cold i haven't so you better stick around so you can figure this out because i'm needing some help hey thank y'all for stopping by camp on a beautiful day the lord has made he had hey they ain't much breeze old glory just sitting over there being so pretty she is and hey we know we have a lot of viewers all over the united states all over the world and we never take it for granted that you watch but we do have quite a large number of viewers that are in australia and new zealand who are we so honored to have you all but we got an email from janine just the other day from australia and she said you know kent i think y'all should maybe talk about doing you know maybe damper australian damper the traditional way some folks call it you know bush bread a long time ago years and years ago it was made with seeds and nuts and everything and they'd grind them down to make a dough and then there was just water and a little salt little flyer hey go to town good morning to the roland's family my name is janine and this is my husband david and this is our taste testing team this is murphy and this is echo hope you have a lovely day and enjoy making our australian damper and janine we thank y'all so much for the suggestion because i do like a challenge i went back and done my research folks they throw in this bread right into hot coals y'all have seen me do this to steak you know the caveman steak video but not bread dough oh my gosh i don't know what's gonna happen here but it was made really so popular many many many many moons ago from the aborigines and all the bushmen that were working down there and all the cowboys down in that country and there is a lot of cowboys in australia they call a ranch a station so hey this was something that they could make on the trail that was so easy but it was also easy to store you could break off a piece of that put it in your saddle bag put it in your coat pocket there's no refrigeration needed this is something that lasts a long time sort of like the hard tack video that we did but hey these folks are just so glad to have it so i got to wonder how come do they call it damper huh let's think on that just a minute it would dampen the appetite until you got something to come along later it's not going to just make you plum full but folks you can be sustainable you can get by on this stuff if you're out in the middle of nowhere or you just want to get in the backyard and you and the kids throw some bread in the fire and go to cooking so hey we're glad to try out this dish we'll see what happens have i ever cooked it before no so this is going to be a challenge but old kent is going to use his noggin today and we'll see what happens so to get started with this and folks there's not really a whole lot of recipe to this a long long time ago it's just flour maybe some powdered milk and water you could put fruit in it a lot back then they was putting some dried raisins if they could find them you could put onion in it you could put bacon in it ham sausage anything to make it a little more sustainable but when you do that folks this is not going to keep as long as it would if it was just straight pure like they made it from originality originality to start out with two cups all-purpose flour now so many people that i've seen that made this use what they call self-raising or self-rising flour but we're just gonna go with all-purpose and we're gonna start with four cups now it will increase as we go along because hey you just gotta go by feel that's what bread is always about to me how does the bread feel now we're gonna add a pretty good dab of baking powder because there is no yeast there's no more leavening action to this but we do want it to pop up just a little the salt that ken forgot had to run to the wagon to get i'd say about that much which is just right go ahead and give that a mix in with your hands now traditionally they would have used what powdered milk little salt maybe a little dab of flour and then some water that was it now we're going to start with canned milk because hey this is something that we use on ranches all the time because you don't have to have any refrigeration it'll keep forever and to me it has a really rich taste mikey a whale sort of right there in the bottom and we're going to start with what i'd call about half of this can which is let's see about that much pretty close it is now i just want you to go to fold in that over there in that milk and i know it's going to take some more but we need to just mix it as we go along that way we can sort of tell if we got enough or we ain't got enough one more time there's the other half of the first can because we want this to make a ball of dough that is really pretty dense in a way but still has a little moisture but doesn't stick to your fingers when you go to work in it so here comes a little bit more we're going to go with about a third of that one just keep folding it around till we can get a pretty good dough like i say that doesn't stick to your fingers and you can always just say oh that's too sticky we need some more flour so let me get over here in the flour can and this is when it becomes really a guessing game because when you add flour if you get too much then you gotta add more milk so like i said it's just by feel and touch it is we'll sift that in there so gently give it a little going over and i'd be liking that because you see that but there's nothing here much because we'll fly our hands it's not really sticking to this we can make us a good ball of dough out of this so let me get my hands on it get a little flyer here don't do that in the house and then i just want you to get it to needing it just to tad to where we can get it out of the bowl and everything is about the same now if you're cooking really a larger batch of this and most people that i've seen were it was six and eight cups of flour now that's a pretty good dab of damper it would be so we're going to set this right here get a cutting board over here fly it well dump it out there there it comes and then i want you just to flatten it out pretty good well y'all wasn't watching over there i don't got me eight or ten slices a thick cut bacon one yellow onion because a yellow onion gonna have a little sweetness and we're just gonna scatter this out here on it now traditionally remember this wouldn't have had this and like i said this won't keep eight or ten days just sitting out because you have meat and something in there else but make sure you get everybody in there and then i just want you to go to rolling it over and let's just go to kneading because we want to make sure that we get that bacon and that onion incorporated throughout everything so when you take a bite you get a bite of each one and every bite now i was thinking about hey this would be really good if we put like maybe like a cup of cheese in there grated cheese you know but when you're gonna throw this directly in the fire that cheese is gonna burn really quick and burnt cheese and me really don't get along well so i'm not gonna do that now i will go ahead and give you this little tip here now when people want to make this at home you could make it in a camp oven but when you can do this with the kids and you can think we can throw this in the fire but if you need to a practice run wrap this in full first then set it over there cookie one or two like that and then you can graduate on over there to the fire time i pull this out in a minute if it's black you'll think oh kent should have used the tinfoil too well folks we got her down there to about an inch and a quarter we needed it pretty well we did now i've got some coals that have burnt down because this really isn't going directly on coals as much as it is sort of hot ash but i'm going to go ahead and give you another tip right here before we go any further go ahead and turn this over flyer is sort of like an insulating barrier in this deal so we need to coat it really well top and bottom with flyer that way when we put it in there that burnt flour will peel off pretty quick turn it over on this side give it another good shaking of insulation and i'll meet y'all right over at the fire lesson number one i've already learned build your fire 30 minutes earlier than you thought and use littler sticks so you can ash the fire out quicker now we're just going to go ahead and peel some of these hot coals back over here and see if there's any ash left under there we'll see what happens here in just a minute go ahead and just keep raking the to one side oh that's what i like to see now you can see there's there's a few hot coals there but looking at the size of our bread in that little spot right there i think we're going to be in pretty good shape i'm going to go ahead and back this up some more so we ain't getting too much residual heat on the ends there and let's just oh that's hot how it is so i have never cooked this before in my life and i like bread but we're gonna throw it in the ash there and we're gonna see what happens so remember you got it dusted really good on both sides throw it right in there and let's go ahead now this is sort of like the caveman steak in a way because you can get no oxygen under here you've cut that off you may get some smoldering but you're not going to have a flame let's see if we can find some more ash to wake up there on top because we can rake off them big coals here in a minute i just want to give it a light coating and make sure you get them hot ones off there if you can and i know y'all be thinking we're crazy right now and you're telling me i think we are crazy i'm not going to eat that he'd have covered it all up with ash now i'd like to get me a little more right over here so we're going to throw that up on there try to move the hot coals off of it if we can you can see if there's any really big hot coals there we're going to try to get rid of them and i'll be acting like i'd be knowing what i'm doing but i really don't and when we get this all done it ain't going to be burnt plumb through the middle i don't think but it might be a little done on both sides but that too will peel off just make sure you can try to get most of them big coals offered and i see now that's probably going to go i'd say 30 to 40 minutes guessing now it's sort of how do you know it's done just like you do when you get a good watermelon know what i mean we're going to give it a good thump if it sounds hollow in there we call it a done deal and going to pull it off there and brush the ash off of it and we're partake in the beast well we're gonna let her cool off a minute we are i'd beats me i don't even know what to expect here i don't we was 48 minutes but when we started them coles was pretty close to it and i scattered them all the way back because it was pretty hot around this outside edge as cooking went on and things began to get a little less heat i brought them in closer and even right there probably the last 20 minutes i just piled it all up on top this piece of bread and let it go hey like i say we're 48 minutes i don't know what it's going to look like in there they say it's supposed to sound hollow when you thump it so i don't know big what do you think so i'm excited this is not memoryx this is live it's just a little little doughy there in the middle but you can see that bacon and onion i'm gonna go ahead and cut me a piece right here well shan here goes nothing sugar it's hot that first bite it was too hot for me to even tell you what it was like now i'm gonna go ahead and go on it's cooled a little bit there you can see the char everything bacon onion well it's different it is but the flavors there come out with the onion and the bacon you get just a little hint of that but the dough really isn't that doughy in here it's just still pretty moist what about like the outside the outside you don't really taste like oh it's burnt you get just a little bit of the smoky flavor to it there and a little bit of maybe the ash but hey made me want to do it down under australia we're going to get over here huh we're going to do the up and over from the down and under yes it is good it is now i can see where down there in the bush them old folks get together and little cowboys at a station or something had a big fire that night made coffee everything cooked supper next morning make that dough throw it over in there rake it up on top go do your chores come back because really when you've got all that ash on there you're insulating you're not really going to get the hot effect of the coals so hey to me we're going to let shan have a bite because i think she deserves oh the big says he would take one he said a little crunchy dad but it's not bad duker you got enough teeth to do this i'm getting bites that don't have onion sides in time out and mage there you go buddy duker you know one more now if you need a little extra help on this and it sure don't hurt it don't get you a temperature probe and you can check it all the way around looking for a temperature about 200 degrees that's about what i like bread but like i was telling you it's not really that it's so much undercooked as there's still a lot of moisture in there as this sets up so i mean that's pretty good looking brilliant and we're going to cut you off a piece but no huh this is these folks sent all this recipe up here we're going to let you have a bite get you some of that crust get you all of it it is good to go uh-huh but really the crunch is not that brad bad now you can keep you one of these when you get that off the fire if you want to it's good yeah rub that all the way around there sprinkle you some parmesan cheese on it you've even helped it some more but you couldn't like i say just put this in your pocket and store it because what it has meat in it it has onion in it so traditionally didn't have none of that it'd keep for a long long time well i want to thank the folks from down under down there to australia for sending me a little hint to try this brilliant i it was very challenging it was and i do like a challenge it was a good deal but as always i tip my hat to all our service men and women all the veterans that have kept old glory flying there in camp it is such a beautiful sight and we appreciate you one and all now folks get on in here come on back in here really tight what we're gonna do give you a great big old hug hold a little damper and we're going to dampen your appetite till you can get there and god bless you i'll see you down the damper trail hang on i got something in my eyeball i know you heard me mention it but i want you to be sure and check out our hard tack video there as well because hey it's something sort of old-timey traditional that you carry around your pocket for about 20 years and eat that stuff be sure and check it out it is a great video\n"