Damper (food)

Damper is a thick home-made bread traditionally prepared by early European settlers in Australia. It is a bread made from wheat-based dough. Flour, salt and water, with some butter if available, is lightly kneaded and baked in the coals of a campfire, either directly or within a camp oven.

Damper was utilised by stockmen who travelled in remote areas for long periods, with only basic rations of flour (much less bulky than baked bread ), sugar and tea, supplemented by whatever meat was available. It was also a basic provision of squatters. Baking soda or beer could be used for leavening the basic flour, salt, and water if available, but traditionally the bread was unleavened. Damper was normally cooked in the ashes of the campfire. The ashes were flattened, and the damper was cooked there for ten minutes, often wrapped around a stick. Following this, it was covered with ashes and cooked for another 20 to 30 minutes until it sounded hollow when tapped. Damper could also be cooked in a greased camp oven. Damper was eaten with dried or cooked meat or golden syrup.

Damper is considered quintessentially Australian, and emblematic of early European settlement and rural life there, although this way to make bread was not unique to colonial or pre-colonial Australia. Other cultures have similar hearth breads, and versions of soda or other quick breads are made when camping in many parts of the world, including New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

When cooked as smaller, individually-sized portions, the damper may be known as "bush scones" or "johnnycakes" (also "johnny cakes"). North American cornmeal bread is also called johnnycake; it is uncertain if this influenced the Australian term. However, Australian johnnycakes, while often pan-fried, remain wheat-based.

The bread is different from bush bread, which has been eaten by Indigenous Australians for thousands of years, traditionally made by crushing a variety of native seeds, nuts and roots, and mixing them into a dough baked in the coals of a fire. There are studies into whether this technique of various Aboriginal peoples influenced the development of colonial-era damper, similarly cooked in the ashes of a camp fire.