I’ve been making a fair bit of bannock recently and, though it wasn’t a deliberate Lenten decision, it fits in well with the season. Bannock is simple bread. Nothing fancy, just flour, salt and something make it rise. If you like, you can add something to make it interesting. It is about using what you have to make simple daily bread. Not slow-rise or sourdough or even any concerted work in the kneading department.
It’s good easy camping fry bread and you can trace its roots through the fur traders and the Hudson Bay Company back to Scotland where the word has Celtic roots. Or maybe Latin roots, depending on who you talk to. Panicium is Latin for baked dough and that doesn’t sound too far from bannock. But bread is bread, and everyone makes it a little differently.
My recipe started with Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford’s cookbook Flatbreads and Flavors, which ranks highly in my collection of favorite books. I spotted it one December in our local bookshop and then later, when we were writing up lists of presents to give, thought it might just hit the nail on the head for my brother. The Spouse offered to do the shopping so I could stay home and cosy with our then-very-little Beangirl, but when he came home empty-handed, he told me that it must have sold as it wasn’t on the shelf. Which was true. He’d bought it over the weekend. And wrapped it up for me.
Since then, we’ve tried our hands at umpteen flatbread recipes from all over the globe. When we hit on a recipe we especially like, we tend to make a run of it. And this month, it’s bannock. We’ve added a little sugar which helps the apples, and a bit of cinnamon, too.
When I was a kid, we used to make bannock on camping trips. We’d mix it up in a cooking pot and, then with buttered fingers, wrap bits of the dough around sticks to cook over the fire. I was never very happy with it – like marshmallows, the outside tends to char and the insides stay sticky which isn’t what I look for in a bread. But made in a pan, it bakes through without a worry and it’s big enough to share – like a cut-and-come again scone. But it’s not sweet or buttery. Just enough and not too much.
Bannock feels like Lent because it is pared down. It leaves space for me to think about other things. It is light to eat and helps the kids push through a little further, a little brighter.
Let’s call it pilgrim food.
This recipe uses a cast iron frying pan, prepared with just a little butter to keep it slick. You can mix this up in about four minutes flat and then it bakes for half an hour. Then a wedge and cup of coffee solves the post-school lurch and gracefully creates enough calm and generosity in the kitchen that you slice some up for the kids, too, and there’s peace. Here’s the recipe.
Bannock
3 cups unbleached all purpose (or hard) flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp sugar + 1 tbsp for sprinkling on top
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cooking apple, diced
1 handful cranberries, frozen or fresh
1 1/2 cup water
Preheat oven to 425°F and lightly butter your cast-iron frying pan. Mine is about 9 inches, but a 10-incher would work, too.
Mix together your dry ingredients, then add your fruit and stir to coat in flour.
Add water and stir quickly to make a stiff wet dough.
Scoop dough into frying pan and, with wet fingers, pat it out to the edges of the pan. Sprinkle on a little sugar, if you fancy, then bake for 30 minutes and test with a skewer – if it comes out clean, the bannock is baked.
Enjoy.
