-pan
must needs serve instead. The interior of the frying-pan he sprinkled
liberally with flour that the dough might not stick to it. Then
cutting a piece of dough from the mass he pulled it into a cake just
large enough to fit into the frying-pan and about half an inch in
thickness, and laid the cake carefully in the pan.
With a stick he raked from the fire some hot coals. With the coals
directly behind the pan, and with the bread in the pan facing the
fire, and exposed to the direct heat, he placed it at an angle of
forty-five degrees, supporting it in that position with a sharpened
stick, one end forced into the earth and the tip of the handle resting
upon the other end. The bread thus derived heat at the bottom from the
coals and at the top from the main fire.
"She's risin' fine!" Jamie presently announced.
"She'll rise fast enough," David declared confidently. "There's no
fear of that."
There was no fear indeed. In ten minutes the loaf had increased to
three times its original thickness and the side nearer the ground took
on a delicate brown, for the greater heat of a fire is always
reflected toward the ground. David removed the pan from its support,
and without lifting the loaf from the pan, moved it round until the
brown side was opposite the handle. Then he returned the pan to its
former position. Now the browned half was on the upper or handle side,
while the unbrowned half was on the side near the ground, and in a few
minutes the whole loaf was deliciously browned.
While the bread was baking David drove a stick into the ground at one
side and a little farther from the fire than the pan. When the loaf
had browned on top to his satisfaction he removed it from the pan and
leaned it against the stick with the bottom exposed to the fire, and
proceeded to bake a second loaf.
"Let me have the dough that's left," Jamie begged.
"Aye, take un if you likes," David consented. "There'll be too little
for another loaf, whatever."
Jamie secured a dry stick three or four feet long and about two inches
in diameter. This he scraped clean of bark, and pulling the dough into
a rope as thick as his finger wound it in a spiral upon the centre of
the stick. Then he flattened the dough until it was not above a
quarter of an inch in thickness.
On the opposite side of the fire from David, that he might not
interfere with David's cooking, he arranged two stones near enough
together for an end of the stick to rest on
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