Side

This is a very simple bread to make either at the campsite or at home. it requires no kneading, and is baked in a Dutch oven or clay baker. This bread’s flavor is developed through extended fermentation.

Many camping menus include pork and beans. You can use ham, salt pork, bacon, or leftover pulled pork to season the beans. If using canned beans, rinse well and add for the last half hour of cooking. An excellent source for dried heirloom beans is Rancho Gordo (see Resources). Chipotle powder adds a little kick to this recipe.

Who doesn’t love crispy, salty potatoes? This simple Spanish-influenced dish is a fine accompaniment to grilled fish. The saffron-scented aioli dressing is also wonderful tossed with pasta or on other seasonal vegetables. This dish is even more stunning when made with Peruvian purple potatoes.

Panzanella is a rustic Italian bread salad, created to use leftover bread. The vibrant tomatoes add moisture to the stale bread for a great summer main course or side dish. In this version, the bread is grilled for extra flavor. If your tomatoes are not at the peak of flavor, grill them, cut side down, until marked to bring out their natural sugars. Cut them into chunks and toss in the dressing before adding to the salad.

Jerry Traunfeld was the executive chef for many years at the HerbFarm in Woodinville, Washington, near seattle and now owns Seattle’s Poppy Restaurant. Jerry’s finely tuned palate served him well in the development of an expansive herb-focused menu at the award-winning restaurant. Jerry’s version of naan, a simple flatbread from India by way of Afghanistan, was created for this book. Filled with a combination of flavor-packed herbs and richly flavored cashews, it’s wonderful!

Peter Reinhart is a well-known cookbook author; his Crust and Crumb, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, and Whole Grain Breads have been graced with prestigious awards. At Ramekins, where he occasionally teaches bread classes, Peter and I baked bread and pizzas together in the wood-fired oven after his last class. This recipe came from his The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. It is an amazing formula that can be turned into baguettes, ciabatta, focaccia, and pizza. That baking session was about a lot more than the recipe. It was about the primary message of this book: joyfully cooking and sharing with others at the fire.

Though pita bread is made throughout the Middle East, we have come to identify it with Greece. When baking, it puffs up like a small balloon and then deflates when removed from the oven. This version has a bit of whole-wheat flour in it for extra nuttiness and added flavor. Make a batch or two ahead and freeze some to use later; these pita reheat easily. Try these filled with strips of roasted Mustard and Lemon Chicken (page 92) and topped with a dollop of Greek yogurt.

This multilayered flatbread is made by spreading the dough with the filling, then folding, rolling, and cooking quickly on both sides on a hot cast-iron griddle or stone. I love to serve them as an appetizer and often add a bit of salty crumbled cheese such as sheep’s milk feta to the filling.

Tim Decker and his wife, Crystal, are the owners of Bennett valley Bakery in Sonoma County. A former apprentice of Peter Reinhart’s, Tim makes artisan breads with a beautifully browned crust by baking them in a wood-fired oven at unusually high temperatures. You can also make this bread successfully in a conventional oven, with the heat as high as it will go.

Focaccia is one of the easiest flatbreads to make: No shaping is needed because the dough is stretched and spread out in the sheet pan. This recipe uses a very wet dough, resulting in a moist flatbread about 3/4 inch thick. You can substitute shavings of Parmesan for the ricotta salata cheese, if you like. Focaccia is best eaten the day it is baked.

When the talk is about biscuits I always think of Leah Chase, chef and owner of Dookie Chase’s in New Orleans, and those she baked for us on one of our Master Chef TV programs. They were the tenderest, the lightest, and really the best I ever remember eating. This is our interpretation of her method. The key to tender biscuits is using light, rapid movements, so that you activate the gluten in the flour as little as possible, and the flour itself plays a role. Southerners make their famous biscuits with soft wheat (low gluten) flour, and to approach its equivalent use part regular all-purpose and part cake flour as indicated here.