Cooking Bannock – Bushcraft Style

Cooking Bannock should be an enjoyable experience out in the wilderness or at home! I believe Bannock traditionally originated from Scottland, but it's  basic recipe has no doubt been cooked worldwide. Bannock is a type of bread roughly the thickness of a scone which is cooked/fried in a pan, best cooked on the slow bed of embers left from a campfire in my opinion.

The great thing about bannock is that you can chuck a wide variety of foods into the mixture according to the time of year or what's available in your environment; Wild-Berries, honey, sultanas or fruit etc. can all be thrown into the bannock (bread). Its this flexible recipe and ease of cooking on a campfire that makes bannock a common bushcraft food.

My personal recipe is as follows:

• Self-raising flour

• Water

• Honey

• Raisins

• Pinch of salt & sugar (optional)

Measurements? I could tell you now :p When I started off following a recipe myself I went by exact measurements and what'not, but you'll soon learn when making Bannock its always good to go with the flow, play it by ear and you'll learn how much to mix to suit your needs. Use the right amount of flour and water to get the mixture to a nice thick doughy mix, so it isn't sticking to your hands too bad at all and then lightly flour either the dough or the pan, this will stop the bannock sticking to the pan as you cook it.

Keep the Bannock moving every now and then when cooking, give it a jiggle, or even a flip! The best bannock I ever made was on a small bed of left over campfire embers, spend about an hour or just over slow cooking it with the recipe mentioned above.

I hope you enjoyed my rough guide to cooking bannock!

Some More Bannock Recipes

Match's recipe

• 2 cups Flour

• 1 tsp Salt

• 1/2 cup Water

Just mix it all together until it forms a dough. this can be cooked in any number of ways (wrapping round stick as described above, cooked on a flat surface (pan/skillet/hearthstone) or fried.

If you want a slightly nicer dough (more bread-like) then use the following:

• 3 cups flour (can use self-raising)

• 1/2 cup dried milk powder

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 cup water or beer

This works better if cooked on a skillet/stone, as it tends to rise a bit, and fall off sticks as it swells. Alternatively, this can be used to make damper - which is basically a campfire bread - get a mess tin with a lid, put the dough in it and bury in the hot coals of a fire until the bread is cooked.


Gerd's's recipe

Another simple recipe for a bannock type of bread would be:

• 4,5 dl flour

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 2 teaspoons bakingpowder

• 50 gram butter / margarine

• 2 dl water

Herbs / spices, whole corn etc can be mixed into this, if you want to. The above is just the basic mix.

Mix all dry ingredients including the butter / margarine and store in plastic bags or containers. Mix water without kneading dough too much when you are going to bake. Divide into "just about right sizes" and bake on the pan in your Trangia set (or whatever type of stove / cooking set you use). Take only about 15 min to mix and bake.

Credit to BushcraftUK and 'Varied' for contributing the above two reciepes,
Original source: http://www.bushcraftuk.com/index.php/Food-Cooking/Bannock.html

Wikipedia article on Bannock: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannock_(food)

Here is more resources on Bushcraft cooking: Link