2006 RV - Doug & Crystal

Doug and I were very fortunate to find a church while we where there for the month. On the left is our minister. She had a group of people from the church to compete in the Bannock Bake Off.
One of the earliest quick breads, bannock was as simple as flour, salt, a bit of fat (often bacon grease) and water. Indians wrapped similar dough around sticks driven into the ground beside their camp fire, baking it along with freshly caught fish. Today's native Fried Bread is like bannock and cooked in a skillet. Brought to North America by early settlers, it soon became a staple for First Nations peoples across the continent. And everyone makes it with what they have at hand; ingredients include cornmeal, flour, rolled oats and wheat bran, lard or shortening, eggs, blueberries, molasses or sunflowers.
These are the judges of the Bannock Bake-off. Bannock taste different every time you eat it, I don't really like it, it is too heavy, but if I drown it in blueberry jelly I can endure it. Another name for bannock is "Galette (or gellette) was the name used by the voyagers of the North West Company for an unleavened flour-water biscuit made by baking in a frying pan, or in the ashes of the camp fire. "The Selkirk Settlers referred to their flour water biscuit as bannock. Eventually bannock became the name accepted and recorded in journals and diaries throughout the western interior of Canada." By the mid 1800s, the original flour water mixture became more elaborate with the addition of salt, suet, lard, butter, buttermilk, baking soda, or baking powder. Bannock acquired other names, too; bush bread, trail bread, or grease bread. The traditional way to prepare bannock was to mix the ingredients into a large round biscuit and bake in a frying pan or propped up against sticks by the campfire. The frying pan usually was tilted against a rock so that it slanted towards the fire for part of the baking.