A rough, freeform loaf of plain flour, water and salt: mixed quickly, shaped by hand, and baked directly in the glowing coals of a campfire until the crust is charred in places and the interior steams open into a dense, satisfying bread. Damper is Australian bush bread: the creation of drovers, swagmen and stockmen who carried nothing but flour and needed a daily bread.
Origin: Australian Outback
From the journey of Wheat.
Damper is the bread of the Australian frontier, developed in the 1820s as European settlers, drovers and swagmen (itinerant workers) pushed into the interior with nothing but basic provisions. The name may come from "damping down" hunger, or from the bush term for plain, simple food. It was mixed in a camp oven (a cast iron pot with a lid) or directly on the coals, wrapped in leaves. Indigenous Australians had been making seed-based flatbreads long before European settlement; the newcomers adapted the simplest possible method to the flour they carried. Damper has become a symbol of Australian colonial heritage, made at campfire cooking demonstrations and on ANZAC Day.
Mapping Culinary History
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