Bannock- Campfire bread
A bread you can make on the barbecue or campfire. Native North American recipe.
Now that it's almost summer, here's a bread you can make at the campfire or on the barbecue.
Fur traders from Scotland, who trapped and explored all across North America in the 1800's, couldn't bake regular breads in the regular way because ovens were just too big for their canoes.
Instead, they put a dough mixture of flour, water and fat from hunted animals, on a stick, and baked it over their campfires. They called this "bannock" which means bread in the Scots Gaelic language.
They showed Native people like eastern Canadian Micmacs, Great Plains Ojibways, and Northwest Coast Haida, how to make this bread.
Now, bannock is a favorite food wherever Native people gather. Bannock can be fried, deep-fried, barbecued, cooked over an open fire, or baked in an oven. Over the years, people have added baking soda, oatmeal, raisins, eggs, or sugar to the basic dough.
Ingredients
- 5 ¼ cups flour
- ¼ cup sugar
- 2 cups water
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 3-4 teaspoons animal fat (lard), or shortening (butter)
In large bowl, stir cups of flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together. You could add something extra - ½ cup raisins, for instance - at this time. In medium bowl, beat together: water, eggs and oil.
Stir wet ingredients into dry. Let dough stand for 5 minutes.
Play with the dough in your hands- "kneading" it for 1 minute. Roll into balls the size of a small egg, then flatten these on your hand, or roll flat with a rolling pin, till they're ¼ inch thick. You can put it on a stick, pan over a campfire, or put it on the barbecue.
You can also fry it up in a skillet on medium -low heat, add a bit of shortening (lard or oil) with your spatula. Frying is hot, be careful!
Drain on paper towels.
Serve warm with butter, honey, or jam.
Its perfect with barbecue bison burgers
For another bread on the barbie here's BBQ Rainbow Pizza which includes a red and white Canada Day Pizza on the grill and a tri-color pizza for the Fourth of July!
Here's another summer bread recipe.
For dessert try grilled fruit
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