Canadian recipe
How to make Bannock
Indigenous communities across Canada
A simple quick bread of flour, baking powder, fat and water or milk, fried in a pan, baked, or wrapped around a stick over a campfire. It is found from the Arctic to the Pacific coast.
Ingredients
- 500 g plain flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar (optional)
- 60 g lard or butter, cut small
- About 300 ml water or milk
- Oil or lard for frying, if you fry it
Method
- Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl.
- Rub in the lard or butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks like crumbs.
- Add the water or milk a little at a time and mix to a soft dough. Do not knead it much.
- To bake: press the dough into a round about 2 cm thick on a greased tray and bake at 200 °C for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden and hollow-sounding underneath.
- To fry: cut the dough into pieces about 1.5 cm thick and fry in hot oil for 3 to 4 minutes on each side until golden and cooked through. Serve warm with butter, jam or soup.
Made it at home? Tick it off and it goes into your kitchen passport.
Fur traders brought the Scottish name and wheat flour, but Indigenous peoples had made breads from corn, roots and other plants long before. When government rations replaced traditional foods on reserves, bannock became a survival food, so for some people it has painful as well as happy memories.
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