How to Make Damper with Aunty Donna Pickett and Aunty Colleen Wheelock: Oven Edition!
Did someone say Damper?
Damper, is a staple in Aboriginal food that can be dated back over 30 thousand year. It was once made by grinding bush seeds and grains such as wattle and spinifex, and cooking the dough over hot coals.
Join Aunty Donna Pickett and Aunty Colleen Wheelock yet again, as they show you how to make their favourite type of damper, an iconic bread that represents Aboriginal heritage, culture and survival- but this time in an oven!
Before you start making the damper, be sure to preheat the oven to around 180 degrees.
To start, begin mixing six cups of plain flour with four cup of self-raising flour. Mix thoroughly, ensuring the flours mix together evenly. All mixing is to be done by hand, Aunty Donna reiterates- it’s important to be able to feel the texture of the dry ingredients.
“When your mixing make sure, the flour is combined and the baking powder is combined. And just feeling it, it’s combined, so you don’t feel the lumps”.
Next add a teaspoon of baking powder. We use both baking powder and self-raising to give the damper a slight rise whilst retaining its moist and dense texture.
Following the creation of the dry base, add in roughly one cup of your choice of add-in ingredients. The aunties decided to add in lemon myrtle into one mix, and ground wattle seed into another- both native flavours that add a subtle depth and flavour profile to the plain damper. You could use cheese, herbs, sugar, cinnamon or stick to more native bush flavours such as saltbush, pepper berry or mint. Adding in some subtle flavours is a fun way to give the damper more flavour and cater it to your individual taste.
“Make a deep hole in the centre of the dry mixture. Just to put the water in. Roughly two glasses of water to start with”.
Aunty Donna then proceeds to begin to mix in the water and flour with her hands, kneading the dough.
“This is kneading the real technique of it. I use my left hand which isn’t my strongest to really work it together.
Aunty Colleen laughs and says, “It certainly gives you a workout doesn’t it?”
“It sure does!” Yells back Aunty Donna.
The dough should begin to look shiny, blending into one big ball that is a soft yet firm clay like texture. Once all combined into this shiny ball of dough, you can begin to flatten the dough and shape it.
Aunty Donna likes to shape hers in a flat circular shape, around four cm in height as this allows it to cook all the way through. The loaves of damper should be around fifteen to twenty centimetres in length and width.
Once shaped, let the damper sit for fifteen minutes to rise before putting it in the oven.
Bake in the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes or until golden brown.
Once baked take the dampers out of the oven and let them rest vertically, standing them up against a counter, chopping board or against a wall to allow air to fill and give the damper more texture. Let them rest for a further ten to fifteen minutes.
Once rested, grab a knife and begin to cut the damper into pieces for serving.
Damper is best served warm out of the oven, and it can be rewarmed in the microwave or oven later.
Aunty Donna recommends having it with butter and jam, whilst Aunty Colleen prefers golden syrup and butter, however they both can’t stress enough that butter is a necessity, and the rest of your topping choices are up to you!
You can use vegemite, honey, chocolate, cheese or dip it into soups like kangaroo stew.
“(The butter) it needs to be dripping” says Aunty Donna,
“I prefer when the honey is dripping” says Aunty Colleen.
“Yeah look at that, I’m the damper queen- yeah yeah look at that we’re the damper queens!”
Tuck in!