Cornbread - Appalachian Trail

imported
#1

Anybody got experience with making cornbread in a cookpot? If I can get it right, I’d like to try it on the trail.

Linguini

#2

Heck, corn bread is easy. Use one of the mixes, add a little squeeze butter and try not to over wet the ingredients. The tough part is that you need even heat and a titanium put won’t get it. An easy way is to put the mix in some foil and set it in the midle of the camp fire with coals around it. Leave the top folded in such a way that you can open it to peak and see if it’s done. Better yet, get a BackPacker Oven.

Bushwhack

#3

What about boiling water and immersing a baggie in it? Also, what about Earl Shaffer’s method of making panbread?

Linguini

#4

Never did the boiling thing but if you used some of the vacuum bags that would work. Depends on what kind of crust you like. What’s Earl do? Just a fry pan special? If your pan is thick enough. ‘Coarse if we’re cookin’ lets git the iron dutch oven out and do this rawt! Since rising ingrediant is baking powder you could also make “pancake” like bread on a non-stick pan. just make them loose enough to pour or spoon and flip once.

Bushwhack

#5

I’ve been making cornbread, muffins, fruit cobblers, and much more for years using the Bakepacker device. It fits into a cookpot and weighs next to nothing. It’s a 1" tall grid, 1/4" spacing, made of aluminum. I leave it in the cookpot all the time. You cook in the bag and use the water that’s left after the mix is baked for your hot drink. 1 cup of mix makes a nice size cake for one. Typical bake time is 14 minutes. Great winter camping device! No cleanup required…just stow the empty bag.

Tim Weaver

#6

Don’t know that one. I was refering to the two piece pan and top with the fiber/foil tent and thermometer. About ten inches across for the medium size one. With a heat diffuser it goes on the stove and the tent over the oven. Bakes super. Watch the thermometer through the hole in the top and when it hits bake your temp is right. Three settings; warm, bake and burn. Pies, quiche’, muffies, french bread is the best!

Bushwhack

#7

Where / how can I get more details?

Linguini

#8

I got mine at REI. Go to Camp/Hike/baking kits. Two different sizes available. The 1-1/2qt Open Country aluminum pot worked best with the smaller Bakepacker. Good luck and great eating!

Tim

#9

Check it out at this site:
http://www.wisementrading.com/outdoorbaking.htm

There are several models, but only one light enough for backpacking. Campmor carried them at one time. You can probably make one fairly easily.
I decided not to get one to save weight.

Scamp

#10

So y’er making big muffins? What about the recipes calling for 400-425 degrees in the kitchen oven, and water boils at 212 degrees?

How would you make one? Can one be made for the small-size titanium pot?

The advantages of cornbread that I see are: Corn for starch and intangibles, whole milk for protein and fat, eggs for protein, salt for replacing whatever, sugar for instant energy. All those can be gotten dry. Plus, whatever else (like fruit) you throw in there. And you can get the flavor of fresh baked bread. Some pretty good nutrition away from home and the local restaurant. Also, a lot of those staples can be bought along the trail.

My problem is, I tend to neglect my cooking once I put the pot on the fire, and my pasta turns mushy. So I don’t know how much babysitting the cornbread will take.

Linguini

#11

Mm. Gotta watch the pot. Typically the BakePacker works best in warm windless weather. The high end of the temp guage is about 375* before you hit the burn area. Warm/bake/burn…
A 10" pan, the size I have, of whatever takes about 30-45-minutes to cook. french bread about twenty five, brownies about twenty, quiche’ about fourty five. The more water the longer it takes to heat it. A slow warm up is best. The thing have a stainless diffuser that get red hot from the stove flame and then the heat goes up and around the sides of the pan, like a dutch oven. If you go full power on the gas the tent will burn and the outside of the food will scortch. Smells like hot sweet rubber burning when you over heat it. The tent that goes over the pot is foil laced fiberglass like a fireman’s silver suit.
Titanium is so thin it just burns everything. I burned water once. Hard to do.

Bushwhack

#12

Sorry. There is ton of heat around the pan and it’s lid which is the same as the bottom, like the JupiterII from Lost in Space with a circus tent over it. You blast heat to the waffly diffuser that sits on top of the stove burner, set the covered, or uncovered pan-uncovered if you want the top brown, like pizza, on it and then set the tent on. Watch the dial on the top of the lid through the small hole in the top of the tent. The guage is also the lid knob like a regular cook pot. It does get hot so grab it with a sock. If your not using the lid you can peer in the tent hole and see it bubbling are brownies getting stiff. After ten minutes at a moderate heat the neddle will start to move around to bake and you WILL smell food. The smell is the best indication of cooking. Once you smell it watch your watch for fifteen minutes and adjust the flame to hit the upper bake area. (if you have white gas, let all the air out of the bottle and then add 1-2 pumps only, lets you run almost wide open since Wisperlites don’t simmer well, add a pump now and then when the flame goes down) After 20 minutes pull the tent and lid off and see what’s what. Pizza? I just flip it after the bottom browns if it’s a little wet on top from bell pepper or whatever. Sunny side down pizza is great. Melts all the cheese to the top and make a big samitch. Inhale. Now I’m all hungry :>( I take mine into work and experiment in the shop to see how different recipes work. It’s easy and for short trips make meal time pretty cool. I also have a stainless grill I made for my Wisperlite that I can grill burgers and steak on. Hot cheese burger after a 20K?! Or grilled cheese?

Bushwhack

#13

The bakepacker, uses boiling water via the grids, to pass the BTu’s from the stove through the water into the bag. This is called heat pipe transference. This device is not a steamer, nor a double boiler. The actual heat passed through the water to the bag is much higher than 212 degrees as a result, therefore one can bake with it. It does not “brown” as a convection device does, such as the Outback Oven. The recipe book that comes with the device is excellent. Over the years I’ve experimented successfully with many new concoctions. I place the mix ingredients in glad bags at home and twist tie them. At camp, add the amount of water to bring to consistentcy, knead/mix it in the bag, place it in the pot over the grid (with water in the grid, and go read a book while its cooking. Ususally 14-15 minutes on medium heat. Again, no cleanup, I eat out of the bag. I love it for winter camping when I like hot food. My favorites are the nut breads, carrot cake, corn bread, blueberry muffins, and rice/canned chicken/dehydrated broccoli/cashews mix I make at home.

Tim

#14

Doh! Yes, I have an Outback Oven, not a Bakepacker. My goof. I don’t know where I got that idea. All previous posts about the Bakepacker, by me, are refering to the Outback Oven. Sorry. Good oven…

Bushwhack

#15

I’ve looked up the pictures of it. My cookpot is 4.75 inches, which is too small because the BakePacker requires about 6 inches diameter. Do you think the BakePacker would lend itself to being cut with metal sheers?

Maybe I should suck it up and get a bigger pot, in spite of my ultralight obsession. Is it back to the tin foil in the coals?

Linguini

#16

Oh sure, you can cut it down easily. It has a band around the perimeter that is riveted. Drill out the rivets, cut the grid to your pot size and re-rivet perimeter band. I bet you could skip the perimeter band altogether. Just be sure the pot is tall enough to allow for rising baked goods. The lid should be tight-fitting to the pot so as to limit water vapor loss from the grid.

Tim -2Q

#17

I co-own a bakepacker with my girlfriend Little Train and she makes stuff on it that I would love to eat at home, so when she makes it in the woods it is out of this world good. She has showed me her secrets and most of the simple and tastiest ones involve Jiffy brand muffin mix. She gets creative too and makes killer pot pies. My friend has one that he cut down and it works good too, but the key is to have as much metal contacting your pot as possible. That is why some people who make their own have problems, because they make a screen that just suspends the food bag over the bottome of the pot and so it doesnt get as hot as the grid which contacts the pot. If you want to know more about it, email us and we would be happy to share recipes and advice.

Heatmizer

#18

I’m always looking for new recipes Heatmizer. Especially dinner meal recipes. Got any good ones? Drop me a line. Thanks.
2Q

2Q

#19

This is a little tough to describe but if you take one of those round cookie tins that someone invaribaly gives you for christmas and poke four holes around the bottom edge and then four hole around the top edge just underneath the lid you have a convection oven that only weighs a few ounces for free. I take a aluminum mess kit bowl and mix up some cornbread mix, an egg, and powdered whole milk and put it in the oven using some bent up pieces of aluminum soda can to raise it off the floor. Put the lid on and set it on top of your tin can alcohol stove with just enough fuel to burn for 15 minutes or so and light it. Go do something else for a while and your cornbread will cook like magic until the fuel runs out. You have to experiment at home to get the fuel rught but when you do you get perfect bread every time with no burning. I’ve used this setup to make muffins, bread, cobblers, and even pecan pie in the woods. If I get up the gumption to take a few pictures of the setup I’ll post it somewhere for you all to see.

frank

#20

This sound cool. How big are the holes? And it wont take up room in the oack since you can put other things in it for travel.

Bushwhack