Beach Fire Stick Bread

During our time in the Tuamotus we learned how to cook a number of things in the fire that we hadn’t cooked in a fire before like breadfruit and bread. Although by no means an expert, we have successfully made “stick bread” once and as promised, here is the process. Let us know how it goes if you try it.

Make any bread recipe that has some oil in it and add some herbs. Let it rise once. Make a fire. Cut some sticks. Take a bit of dough and roll it out into a long snake. Wrap the snake around a stick. Arrange the sticks over the fire, close enough that the bread rises and starts cooking but not close enough to brown. When the bread has risen, move it closer to the fire so it cooks and browns. Try not to burn it or cook it too fast or the outside will be done but the inside will be doughy. The bread is done when it feels hollow when tapped, just as in a bread pan.

EXTRA: A tasty way to use the bread is to cut the stick bread in half to remove it from the stick. Then, brush the stick with New Zealand canned butter and top it with a couple forkfuls of hot, freshly caught fish, that you cooked in foil in the fire. A full meal from the fire.

Here is a bread recipe that we used:

• Proof 5 tsp of yeast and 1 tsp of sugar in 2 cups of warm (not hot) water.
• Mix 5.5 cups of flour, 1 tbsp salt.
• Add 1/3 cup of oil to the water/yeast mixture and then add it to the flour mixture.
• Rise to double and then add 2 tbsp of Herbs de Provence (asiago cheese is also tasty – I add more thant 2tbsp if using asiago).
• You can also cook this bread in the oven at 450F for about 12min.