We haven't had a good bannock thread in awhile so I thought I'd start one. I found several good recipes off this site for a recent trip. My son really wanted to make it, it was a big hit with our group and is now on our list for things to make in camp. We mixed the basic flour, baking powder, salt recipe with a couple of teaspoons of garlic powder and pepper. Butter was the preferred topping as we fried it -- it really wasn't much different than what I would consider "fry bread".

That's because 'bannock' is French for 'frybread'. ;)

I always thought the recipe was from the Native People and the early Europeans adapted it. Turns out that was wrong.

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Whoever came up with it did good that's for sure.  ;) ;D

Did OS write that wiki entry?  ;D  Indigenous people have generally had some grain-based baked or fried bread or biscuit that stretches back at least to "paleo-times". At least I thought that was the case from my reading. I wouldn't doubt that there has been a European or Middle Eastern equivalent. Africans certainly have their own version of this.

So here's the next bannock recipe that I want to try: Make up the basic bannock recipe. Fry up two separate dollops of the mix on a flat skillet. Layer on top of one of the dollups some pepperoni, sliced provolone, anything else that can fit on top (veggies) and then flip the other dollop. Hopefully the whole things hangs together for sort of a calzone-type sandwich. That's it.

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Hopefully the whole things hangs together for sort of a calzone-type sandwich. That's it.

Find a clean flat rock and lay it on top after you flip over. Sort of like a Q-Panini Press. I think that would help hold things together nicely.

If you use baking powder to leaven bannock, add a little cream of tartar.  It helps the baking powder do its job.

It comes in a powder form, correct? Do you add a teaspoon to say 1 to 2 cups of flour for the amont you are going to make?

Jiffy pizza dough mix is my goto for fry pan bread.  Easy, lots of options, inexpensive.

I found a reference in some recent readings on Robert Rogers that referred to the Bannock indian tribes and was wondering if somehow the word was derived from a presumably Algonquin tribal name?

That's perceptive Nanda. It is, in fact, the Algonquin equivalent of 'doughboy'. Thanks for sniffing that out. ;)

It's pahkwêsikan in Cree for traveling nourishment or alternatively "he who pushed the metaphor too far fairs badly".

;D ;D

"In June 2000, Michael Blackstock, Aboriginal Affairs Manager of the Kamloops Forest Region in British Columbia, published a small booklet entitled ‘Bannock Awareness’, ....More importantly, Blackstock’s publication features no less than seventeen recipes for bannock; some that incorporate ingredients used prior to European contact....  Blackstock argues that there is a false assumption “that Aboriginal peoples did not have forms of bread prior to European contact.”  He states that natural ingredients such as lichen and plants were used....
Bannock or Sapli’l, as it is known, was made with flour from wild plants before European contact."  ----   (You need to Login or Register

..And so the plot (or bannock) thickens....