I’m not crazy about the word camping. It’s not a bad word, mind you, but it has some mental images that I’d rather not evoke. One of them is campground. Again, nothing wrong with campgrounds; we use them fairly frequently. Certainly, visits to a camp w0uld may be outdoor experiences, but they’re not wildernss experiences. Milk before, then meat.
One of the things I love most about utdoor living is the simplicity of it all. Food can be as complex as you want it; we’ve made eggplant parmeggiana and all sorts of gastronomical delights. That said, my favorite outdoor is simplicity itself.
Bannock bread is a simple, pan-baked quickbread that, in my mind, tasted better than real bread, especially when liberally seasoned with wood ash. Add some local basswood honey and you’re on your way to Nirvana. It’s amazing how good a little flour, water, baking powder, salt and shortening can be.
The best thing about bannock is its elemental nature. With the exception of a little baking powder, this could be an Egyptian recipe. It’s a simple gift, a reminder that mousse au chocolat is all well and good (very good!), but it’s a recent phenomenon in the historical timeline. For most of our existence, we’ve been eating boring food.
It also reminded me, as I was scraping crumbs from the pan under a spruce tree (a treat for the chickadees), that there are a few million people in Haiti right now for whom this would be a feast. We are a bunch of spoiled children when it comes to food. The two year-old in the high chair launches a brussell sprout across the room with a vociferous yucky, yet we turn our noses up at food that would be welcomed by more than half the world’s population. Not to be a buzzkill, mind you, but we as a society have a pretty pathological relationship with food.
Okay, moving on…
Another bannock byproduct is the method of cooking it. You cook it around a campfire, period. You can’t do it on a camp stove, even if NOLS says you can*. This means you will automatically enjoy the conviviality that accompanies a campfire. I’ve never been bored sitting around a campfire. Neither has my son.
L. to R.: someone's feet, Canoelover Jr., Canoelover.
Canoelover’s Bannock Recipe
- 3 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 Tbsp. baking powder
- 3 Tbsp. powdered milk
- 2 Tbsp shortning
- 1 tsp. sugar
Instructions
Mix everything together except shortening (lard or Crisco). Mix the shortening in by crumbling everything all up with your fingers, making little flour-covered bits of shortening, about the size of a grain of rice. You can do this ahead of time and keep pre-measured baggies of it around for quick mixing.
Add water until the dough is very stiff. There should be a little bit of mix left in the pan, that’s how dry you want it. I sometimes make a hole in the middle of the dough and fold the leftover mix within the pocket, fold it over a few times to use it all up.
It bakes in a cast iron skillet. Just keep it moving. It’s not a passive, set-it-and-forget-it sort of cooking. It’s a dance with cast iron, fire, and sometimes a slightly scorched finger. It’s all part of the process, and part of the fun.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
*Not a fan of twig fires on top of your lid. Gimmicks aren’t skills. Your mileage may vary.
Is there a cooking show in your future?
Nope. I like cooking too much.