If you’re Canadian, chances are that you’ve made bannock at some point in your life, probably in summer camp or as part of a school outing. I used to make it whenever I camped, but sort of forgot about it as the years went by. I picked up a recipe for this quick bread at the Fort Nelson Museum last week and have had a craving for it since!

This morning, I looked at the multigrain bread I normally have for breakfast and felt mildly queasy. So, I decided to whip up a batch of this bannock for a welcome change of pace. Of course, bannock tastes best cooked over an open fire, or, in a pinch, a cast iron skillet, but this morning’s batch made in a non-stick frying pan was most satisfactory.

Ingredients

(can be halved)

4 cups flour

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

3 cups water

raisins (optional)

Method

Mix dry ingredients. Add water and mix dough to a drop consistency.

Melt cooking fat or heat oil in a frying pan until hot.

Drop tablespoons of mixture into hot fat.

Fry until brown all over.

Suggested toppings: honey, butter and jam, or, this morning’s sweet treat, real Quebec maple syrup.

The bread is very light and chewy. Unlike my former favourite quick bread, biscuits, bannock is great cold.

You can, of course, adjust the quantity of fat. I’ve been burning a lot of calories these days, so I didn’t go lightly on the olive oil this morning, but normally I wouldn’t use any fat at all in my non-stick skillet. I would also normally do half whole wheat flour, half white, but I was out of whole wheat today.

I didn’t count how many cakes a half recipe made, perhaps a dozen or so. Total time from getting the ingredients out of the pantry to flipping the last cake out of the pan: fewer than fifteen minutes.

I never keep eggs in the house, so these are going to become my alternative to pancakes. They’re so good! With raisins, they can easily be eaten as is. Next time, I’m going to add some nuts, in addition to the raisins, to turn the bannock into a great hiking snack.