Dutch Oven Sourdough: Cowboy Camp Bread Made Simple

There’s a particular kind of morning at camp that I’d trade a lot of fancier breakfasts for. The fire’s been banked overnight, the sky over the Bighorns is going from gray to gold, and somebody — usually me, because I can’t help myself — has a Dutch oven nestled in the coals with a loaf of sourdough working inside it. You can smell it before you can see it. That sour, toasty, almost-caramel smell drifting through cold mountain air. When you finally lift the lid and there’s a round, blistered, deep-brown loaf sitting there, it feels like you got away with something.

Here’s the secret I want to hand you up front: baking sourdough in a Dutch oven is genuinely simple. It sounds like a brag-worthy backcountry feat, and you’re welcome to let people think that, but the technique is forgiving and the gear is cheap. Whether you’re doing it over a fire in the Wind Rivers or in your own kitchen in Casper, the method is nearly the same.

A Little Wyoming History Baked In

The Dutch oven isn’t a novelty out here — it’s bedrock. Back in the cattle-drive and chuckwagon days, the camp cook (the “cookie”) fed entire outfits out of a few cast iron pots over a fire. Bread was non-negotiable. Cowboys ran on biscuits, sourdough, and whatever the cookie could coax out of a starter he kept alive in a crock on the wagon, sometimes sleeping with it on cold nights so it wouldn’t die. That starter was a prized possession, passed along and guarded like a family recipe.

So when you bake a loaf in the field today, you’re not doing anything new. You’re stepping into a line of camp cooks that stretches back a hundred and fifty years across this state. The difference is you get to do it for fun, on a weekend, without thirty hungry cowhands waiting on you. That’s a good deal.

What You’ll Need

The heart of this is the pot. For camp, you want a proper camp Dutch oven — cast iron, with three legs and a flat, rimmed lid built to hold coals on top. A 12-inch cast iron camp Dutch oven is the right size for one good loaf with room to spare. At home, any heavy lidded Dutch oven works — the legs and rimmed lid just aren’t needed indoors.

Beyond the pot, keep it short:

• An active sourdough starter (more on keeping it alive below). If you’re starting from zero, a sourdough starter kit takes the guesswork out of week one.
• Bread flour, water, and salt. That’s the whole ingredient list.
• A bread lame for scoring the top so it opens up cleanly.
• A pair of campfire cooking gloves and a lid lifter. Cast iron full of coals does not forgive bare hands.

The Dough (Same for Camp or Home)

Mix this the night before you bake. It’s one bowl and about five minutes of actual work.

• 100g active, bubbly sourdough starter
• 375g water (lukewarm)
• 500g bread flour
• 10g salt

1. Stir the starter into the water until it’s milky. Add the flour and salt and mix with your hand until there’s no dry flour left. It’ll be shaggy and rough. That’s right.
2. Cover and let it sit 30 minutes. Then, over the next couple of hours, give it three or four “folds” — wet your hand, grab one side of the dough, stretch it up and fold it over the middle, turn the bowl, repeat. Thirty seconds each time.
3. Cover and let it rise at room temperature until it’s puffy and grown by about half — 4 to 8 hours depending on warmth. (Wyoming nights run cold, so at camp this is slower. Plan for it.)
4. Shape it into a round, drop it onto a square of parchment, and tuck it into the fridge or a cold cooler overnight. The cold slow-proof is what gives you that deep flavor and an easier loaf to handle in the morning.

Camp Version: Baking in the Coals

This is where reading your fire matters. You want a bed of hot hardwood coals or a chimney of charcoal briquettes — briquettes are honestly easier to count and control, and there’s no shame in that.

1. Get your Dutch oven hot first. Set it empty in the coals with the lid on for 10–15 minutes.
2. Lift the cold loaf, parchment and all, into the hot pot. Score the top with one confident slash. Put the lid on.
3. Now the heat: you want more heat on top than bottom so the bottom doesn’t scorch. For a 12-inch oven, a good rule is roughly 8–10 coals underneath and 16–18 on the lid. That gives you an internal temperature in the neighborhood of a home oven’s bread setting.
4. Bake about 20 minutes with the lid on, then carefully peek. Rotate the oven and the lid a quarter turn in opposite directions every 10 minutes or so to even out hot spots.
5. It’s done when it’s deep brown and sounds hollow when you knock the bottom — usually 40 to 50 minutes total. Pull it onto a rack or a clean board and let it rest at least 20 minutes before cutting, hard as that is.

While the coals are going strong and you’ve got the heat dialed in, that’s the perfect window to start a Dutch oven peach cobbler for dessert. Same pot skills, sweeter payoff. If you’re at hunting camp and want a fuller spread to build around the bread, I’ve got a whole rundown of camp meals for Wyoming hunters worth a look.

Home Version: Standard Oven

Want the crackly crust without the campfire? The Dutch oven does the same job indoors — it traps steam around the loaf, which is the whole trick to a bakery-style crust.

1. Put your empty covered Dutch oven in the oven and heat it to 475°F. Let it sit at temperature a full 30 minutes — a screaming hot pot matters.
2. Lift the cold loaf in on its parchment, score it, and put the lid on.
3. Bake covered for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and bake another 20–25 minutes until it’s deep golden brown.
4. Cool on a rack at least 20 minutes before slicing.

Keeping Your Starter Alive

A starter is just flour and water with wild yeast living in it, and it’s tougher than people fear. Feed it equal parts by weight flour and water (say 50g starter, 50g flour, 50g water) once a day if it lives on the counter, or once a week if it lives in the fridge. For camp, feed it the morning you leave so it’s peaking, then keep it in a sealed jar in the cooler. A starter that’s gone a little flat will bounce back with a feeding — it takes real neglect to actually kill one.

The Mistakes Everybody Makes

• Too hot. The number one camp error. A scorched black bottom and raw middle means too many coals underneath. Pull some out and put more on the lid.
• Under-proofed. If the dough didn’t rise enough — common on a cold Wyoming night — the loaf comes out dense and tight. Give it time, and be patient when it’s cold out.
• Too much flour. A stiff, dry dough bakes into a heavy brick. Sourdough should be a little tacky and slack when you shape it. Trust the wetness.
• Cutting it too soon. I know. But slicing hot bread releases the steam it needs to finish setting inside, and you’ll get a gummy crumb. Let it rest.

Why It’s Worth Learning

Here’s what actually happens when you pull a good loaf out of the coals: people gather. There’s something about fresh bread in the backcountry that pulls everyone in close. You tear it apart with your hands because nobody packed a fancy bread knife, you pass it around, somebody’s got butter or honey, and for ten minutes nobody’s looking at a phone. It’s the most basic food there is and somehow it’s the highlight of the trip.

That’s the real reason this skill is worth developing. Not because it’s hard — I hope I’ve convinced you it isn’t — but because a loaf of sourdough off a campfire is a small, generous thing you can make almost anywhere, for almost anyone. The cowboys knew it. Make it once and you’ll understand why they slept with their starter.

Get out there, build a fire, and bake some bread. I’d love to hear how your first loaf turns out.