Last year I published several RVtravel.com articles on camp cookery and the use of sourdough for creating the best traditional camp fare (more on those recipes below). This year, we’ll continue to feature simple and savory traditional camp cooking that can be done over the fire, camp stove, or RV oven, if you have one. We’re starting with Bannock.
No camp cook should be without a variety of traditional frontier breads in their repertoire, and Bannock is a very old and very simple bread type with few ingredients that you can put together in minutes and enjoy.
About Bannock
Bannock is an old trail bread, as well as one traditionally baked by indigenous peoples in Alaska and Canada, and the Lower 48 pioneers. It originated in Scotland way back in ancient times. The Inuit people of northern Canada and Alaska call it palaugua. It is a bread that can be mixed up in a few minutes, baked in the coals, a reflector oven, on top of the camp stove, or in an oven.
Ingredients and directions
- 1 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon dry milk powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons bacon fat or lard (you can substitute cooking oil)
- 1/4 – 1/2 cup cold water—add just enough to make a soft dough
Stir together the dry ingredients. Add fat/oil and enough water to stir into a ball. Turn dough out into a cast iron frying pan or Dutch oven greased with bacon fat and pat it flat to about 3/4- to 1-inch thick.
Hang the Dutch oven over the fire or cover it with coals. If using a frying pan, set it tilted in front of the hot coals, being careful to watch it so the Bannock does not burn on the bottom. When golden brown, test the bread with a toothpick. If it comes out clean, the bread is done.
For sweet Bannock, add sugar or raisins, etc., when mixing.
Enjoy.
More sourdough recipes:
##RVT1089
Bannock is an old gold mining town, and maybe a county seat?
Montana..
Anyway..Thanks for the recipe, since I am snowed in at this time, I hope to find you again.
I have 4 cast iron cooking instruments and love cooking with them..Not being mean about the Montana comment, the time we stayed there, so were the skeeters. Didn’t find any gold either, bummer.
Found the hot springs a bunch of miles that-a-way, north.
Can’t recall the name tonight..
Thanks….
I’ve used pancake/waffle mix to make a simple bannock in the past — just make a dough instead of a batter and add savory or sweet ingredients to customize the taste.
I see that baking soda is used as a leavening agent in this recipe, but I don’t see any acidic ingredient (eg buttermilk) to react with the soda to release carbon dioxide to make the dough rise. Shouldn’t baking powder (a mixture of baking soda and acidic cream of tartar) be used as the leavening, instead?
Good point. First, it couldn’t hurt to use some buttermilk if you have it on hand. I often don’t in camp, but it certainly adds to the recipe. Adjust proportions to maintain dough. Another thing–I have taken to using Baker’s Cream, in lieu of Baking Powder. It has a much more impressive leavening effect. Good luck!
We used to make something like this in the Boy Scouts, only we wrapped it around a stick we found laying around in the woods (GASP!) and cooked it over a fire. It was good, and nobody died or even got sick! Imagine that.