Category: Breads

Sourdough Bannock

Ingredients:

sourdough starter
unbleached hard flour
salt
(yeast
sugar)

If you have sourdough: Take a cup of your sourdough starter and mix it with a cup and a half of unbleached hard spring wheat flour and a quarter teaspoon of salt. Using more flour as necessary, gather the mass up and knead thoroughly, until the paste is smooth and elastic.
If you have no sourdough: Put a half cup of tepid water in your warmed mixing bowl with a teaspoonful of active dry yeast, a teaspoonful of flour, and a teaspoonful of sugar. Let this begin to foam before you add two cups of hard unbleached wheat flour into which you have put half a teaspoon of salt. Mix until you can turn out onto a floured board. Knead until the texture of the dough is smooth and elastic.
Wash, warm and oil your bowl. Put the dough in and turn it over to coat the top. Cover with a moistened towel. Leave in a warm spot away from drafts until roughly doubled in size. Punch down, knead again, and divide into four pieces.
Roll out each piece of dough into a disk the size and thickness of a china plate.
Preheat a dry griddle or large iron frypan and slap a bannock onto it. Cook fairly slowly, until the bottom is mostly browned, then turn over and press down with a folded cloth in a series of firm dabs to make the bannock puff up. When the second surface is showing lots of browning, remove and keep warm in a folded cloth until you can serve it. Dust any burnt flour from the griddle with a cloth to keep it from getting onto the next bannock, which you will have rolled out while the first was baking.

Notes:

You can mix these in camp right in the flour bag, as is traditional, or in a plastic pouch. You can also let them rise in a plastic bag inside your shirt if it's cold out. If weight is an issue, and you've no flat surface to roll out on, then spin the paste as if it were a pizza.

Recipe Index

More Breads:

Buttercup Flatbread  |  Stuffed Flatbread  |Onion Bread  | Olive and Shallot Pie  | Sesame Roti |