Incredible Discoveries #166

Incredible Discoveries - Damper

An occasional series

I always enjoy wandering through the back streets of the city. There is a huge variety of life that takes place away from the main streets. Narrow streets, wide enough only for one car to pass (just), are a hive of life and activity. My street alone is lined with vendors selling all manner of goods – fruit and vegetables, peppers and spices, noodles and rice, fish (in plastic buckets - still alive, just), various animal bits etc. There are stalls peddling everything from socks to batteries to hair brushes to hand-woven baskets, and blokes just sitting around smoking and playing cards with their friends.

Wandering through the back streets earlier this week I came across a truly Incredible Discovery. One of the snack vendors was selling damper!

The Chinese don’t really eat much bread, generally preferring rice. Bread is readily available in supermarkets and cake-shops but it is sweet and sugary. Even some loaves which look like wholemeal bread, as I know it, are full of sugar. That said, nice bread is available but it takes some finding. The nearest to me is in a supermarket that is about a 25 minute walk from my home where they bake massive round loaves daily. They cut it into chunks to sell separately and I will usually go there at some point on a Saturday to buy a chunk of fresh-baked wholemeal.

So when I strolled past a snack vendor last week who was pulling oval-shaped pastry looking treats out from the coals of his 44-gallon drum ‘oven’, the last thing I expected was a traditional Aussie bush bread. The drum has a hole cut in one end and the dough was placed inside to cook on the hot coals. When they’re done they’re pulled out with what looks like a long pair of scissors and kept warm on top of the drum until sold. The one I bought had a sweet syrup inside it, I thought it might have been jam but later found out it was simply sugar which had melted. There was another variety which looked savoury so I’ll be giving that one a go next time. At 5 jiao a pop (less than 10 cents) I might even have two.