Backpacking Biscuits

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It's my Dad's fault.

He was the one who decided that my parents should take up backpacking when they were in their 50's. Not that my Mom was not game.... one of my great teen memories was of her attempts to learn to water ski. She could get on top of the water, but somehow her legs just would not straighten and so she would drag half around the lake getting a terrific spanking as her bu.... uh, derriere dragged in the water. She was grimly determined to do it and have fun if it killed her. Backpacking would not have been her idea, but she did it and was good at it.

So, we all got into it. One of my nephew Daron's fondest memories was of a backpacking trip with my Dad and my nephew Tom......... SO, after a hiatus of some years, he got us to go backpacking as a group again last year. My Sister, Bobette, Daron and his kids, and me. It was fun. Honest. And we are getting ready to go again. Tom and his kids will join us this year, as will Jim, Tom's brother.

On that trip I tried the old boy scout trick of roasting biscuit dough on a stick over a campfire.
I was never a boy scout. There had to be a reason, and my results with biscuit making may indicate some of them.

BUT, I do love biscuits and the idea of biscuits on a backpacking trip is just so compelling. AND my later experience with a Dutch oven in camp were really encouraging. So, why not do that on a backpacking trip? Uh, no way am I gonna lug a dutch oven up a mountain. But why not do some experimenting with those lightweight aluminum throw away pans and see what can be done, right?

THIS is why a grown man was baking biscuits in a make-shift dutch oven over a campfire in his driveway at 7 o'clock in the morning.

It was my Dad's fault.

Dutch ovens really work!

I love cast iron cookware. I dunno, maybe it's just the straightforward heavy duty utility of the stuff. I mean, a lot of it is as plain as a mud fence. I don't really know what is available now, 'cause I buy mine at junque shoppes, but there have been some interesting things made for cooking, from little bitty frying pans to huge ones, griddles, sauce pans, tea kettles, muffin pans.
Hey, one of my favorites is a special pan for baking individual serving cornbread in which the cornbread is molded to look like half an ear of corn. Top that!. I've even got a waffle iron made for the top of wood ranges with the round lid over the firebox removed. The iron itself hinges at the end away from the handles and the hinge turns into a ball which then neatly fits into a socket in the holder which looks kinda like an upside down saucepan with no bottom. the side of the iron by the handles is a sort of roller when it is closed, and that fits neatly into a slot in the holder. This is to allow the waffle iron to be turned over without removing it from the holder..... neat, huh? Hey, I wonder if I could make waffles over the grill on a campfire...... Anyway, the utinsil that impresses me most is the dutch oven, that relatively shallow pot with a bail and a lid that covers the edges of the pot itself. This is important because to use the dutch oven you move the coals of your campfire and set the oven down on a shallow bed of coals and cover the lid with more coals and you don't want ashes getting inside the oven. This allows the heat to come down on top of whatever you are baking just like a..a.. well, an oven. Kewl. I picked up one at some yard sale or whatever and it only needed a little cleaning up, so I scoured that puppy out and baked the proper glaze into the cooking surface so stuff wouldn't stick and took it camping this weekend. I made biscuits. I'm no baker, and really not much of a camp cook, but how hard could it be? Anyway, it's more fun to approach new stuff with the attitude that "When all else fails, read the destructions." Did you see Lonesome Dove? Remember the scene where Gus is up way early with his coffee and is making biscuits in a dutch oven? He brushes off the coals and ashes carefully and lifts the lid and there are these beautiful fluffy golden brown sourdough biscuits. Wow! I make drop biscuits from Bisquick. I'm just not that ambitious. So I carefully let the fire build a bed of coals while drinking my camp coffee, and I put the drop biscuits into the dutch oven, covered it and properly got it bedded and covered with burning coals. NOw, normally, I make biscuits in a toater oven and you can see the things through the glass door. Cast iron lids aren't that easy to see through, so I did it by guess and by golly. I decided that the time was long enough before carefully removing the coals, brushing off the ashes and lifting the lid. The time was long enough. Dutch ovens are also great for making charcoal.