Well, it’s another week and another new edition of Voice Magazine. I made this recipe last year and shared the finished product with my neighbour, Paul. I must brag about how fantastic my neighbour is. He might not think he is, but he’s pretty awesome! Paul and his family share an alley with us. He’s a Professor of Indigenous Studies at another University. You might have heard of a course he co-created as Dan Levy helped give it some forward motion by joining it and subsequently promoting it last year. The last time I asked him about it, the course had over 400,000 people finish it. Paul is Metis from Saskatchewan, his spouse is from Ontario, and they have a couple of kids. Paul is one of those guys who is super kind and caring but also likes to joke around. So as a gesture of neighbourly appreciation, I delivered him some Saskatoon Bannock.
I fried these bannocks, but I’ve had great success with baking them as well. If you are not a fan of saskatoons, or you cannot get them, you can try a couple of substitutes. Saskatoons also go by the name Juneberry or serviceberry. I’ve heard Juneberry used more colloquially in the United States and Eastern Canada. They look like a small blueberry but taste way better. We can find saskatoons growing wild in the Edmonton area, but we also visit u-picks and sometimes get them from the store.
If you cannot find saskatoons, Juneberries, or serviceberries where you live, then I feel sad for you. However, you can use blueberries to emulate the flavour, though you’re missing out. Alternatively, just leave the berry out and make this bannock plain. I added sugar to this recipe to make it more sweet dough than savoury, but bannock (culinarily speaking) is like southern biscuits. When I made a recipe like this with my Cub Scouts, I told them that Europeans made bannock around the same time as our Indigenous peoples. The recipe difference had more to do with the ingredients available to them.
In my short amount of research into this and some use of Wikipedia and other websites, the differences were possibly significant enough that both bannock recipes should be considered variants of the same formula. The recipe is simply flour, fat, water, and heat.
The difference is that Europeans had access to salt and sugar, where these ingredients were not as readily available to the Indigenous peoples of the time. Flour would have been different as well as corn or wheat may have been used, whereas, in Europe, wheat flour is more likely the primary source of flour. Fat is another area that would have been different. We have a plethora of fats available to us; plants like canola and coconuts give us some fat but can also use animal-based fats like butter or lard. I don’t think Indigenous people generally cultivated cows, and I believe their fats came from buffalo and other animals. Europeans had bovine dairy available and hogs for lard. I’ll admit I am certainly not an expert so take my speculations with a grain of salt, and if I’m wrong, please tell me. Other sources I’ve read also suggested that the Indigenous peoples gave bannock to the Europeans, who then exchanged ingredients.
Thankfully today, we have access to more than enough of the world’s food. With solid fats, like butter, lard, or shortening, you want to work them into the flour like you would if you were making pie dough. Mix it until it looks crumbly and forms a solid mass if you squeeze it. Each fat will do something different to your bannock, though. Butter will add flavour, lard and shortening will make it slightly more challenging (still very tender, but not as flaky as butter). I chose a combination of butter and shortening this recipe. This way, I get a good variety of tender flaky and a dough that doesn’t fall apart right away. You can also just use half a cup of one ingredient, such as butter. It’s not going to be terrible… unless you overbake it, in which case, don’t blame me, Sharon Weiss; you did that all yourself.
So, if you’re not Sharon and you know how to follow instructions, then enjoy this dish and share it with your friends… eventually, don’t do it now, COVID.
Saskatoon Bannock
Ingredients:
3 cups flour
¼ cup butter
¼ cup shortening
2 TBSP baking powder
1 tsp fine salt
1 TBSP sugar
1 ½ cups of cold water
1 -2 cups saskatoons, depending on your preference
Directions:
- Mix all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.
- Add the fat and mix it up until it resembles coarse cornmeal.
- Add the water and mix everything until the dough is mostly combined.
- Lightly flour a work surface and pour out the dough to work it into a ball.
- Once it is no longer sticky, knead it for two minutes and rest for five minutes.
- Heat a frying pan with an inch of oil until the oil reaches 350° Alternatively, turn on your oven to 350°F and prepare the following steps as though you were using the range and baking sheet.
- Roll out the dough to ½ inch in height and cut out circles starting on the outside and working your way towards the middle. A glass works if you do not have rings as I do.
- Once you have finished, roll up the remaining dough and repeat the last step until all the dough is used.
- Once the oil is ready, fry a couple at a time, leaving space between them.
- Fry for two minutes, then flip and fry for another two minutes. Repeat this until a toothpick comes out clean from the largest bannock. OR, bake in the oven for up to 30 minutes, poke a toothpick in the center. They are done if it comes out clean, and the bottom of the bannock is browned.
- Repeat with all the dough until they are all golden brown and delicious!
- Let them rest for 5 minutes and then devour.