Damper is a delicious and super easy Australian quick bread! This is a no yeast, no knead bread, that is ready in under an hour! Flavored with fresh pumpkin and feta; this savory quick bread is delicious warm from the oven or leave it to cool and then spread with butter. Serve it for dinner as a side dish for soup, or stew or as part of a lunch.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper/baking paper (or lightly grease it)
Grate the pumpkin and then transfer to a sieve. Squeeze as much water as you can from the grated pumpkin.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add in the cubed butter and use your fingers to rub it together to form a coarse crumb. Or you can put it all into a food processor and use the pulse function to combine it.
Add the grated pumpkin and crumbled feta to the flour and lightly toss to coat all the pumpkin in flour (see post above for picture)
Add in the milk and stir with a spoon until just combined, don't overwork it. The mixture will be slightly sticky. (see note 3)
Tip the dough out onto a lined baking sheet and with floured hands, pat it gently to form it into a disk (roughly 9 inches/23 cm wide).
Flatten the top slightly and use a floured knife to mark the top of the bread (see post above for picture), or you flatten slightly but leave it as a rough, craggy top. (see note 4)
Baked the bread for 45-50 minutes until it sounds hollow on the bottom and is golden on the top.
Let the bread sit for 10 minutes before cutting it.
Enjoy warm from the oven or allow to cool and slice it thinly to spread with butter.
Notes
You can substitute some or all of the pumpkin for different vegetables, just be sure to end up with 3 cups of grated veg. I like to include:
butternut squash
carrots
sweet potatoes
If you only have self-raising flour then you can use this instead. Just omit the baking powder and use ½ teaspoon of the salt instead.
You don't want to work the flour too much (so there is no need to knead) as this will give you a denser bread. The mixture will be a little sticky but shouldn't be wet. If you have a very dry mix you can add an extra tablespoon or so of milk, but be sure not to make the mixture too soft.
I find it cooks more evenly in the oven when flattened and marked, so I do that at home, but when we are camping, it just gets cooked as a rough mass.