Huckleberry Bannock Recipe
Bannock is a gaelic word from Scotland. A bannock is a kind of bread so this is an ancient Celtic recipe that has been updated to use North American huckleberries. A bannock is usually a large round loaf of bread or cake baked from unleaveaned grain. You have probably heard about bannock wedges, which are usually called scones. Yup, bannock is where your scones come from.
The original bannocks were unleavened as I said but modern bannocks are now made with baking soda or baking powder, which is a leavening agent. The word bannock is believed to have originated with the Latin word panicium, meaning "baked dough". Did the Celts learn to make bannock from the Romans or did they just adopt the Roman word for it? We will probably never know. The Scots used to bake bannock on a stone (called a stane). The northern English people learned to bake bannock on griddles (the Scots called them girdles).
Here is an old recipe for huckleberry bannock, a breakfast bread using small black huckleberries.
This is the real old-fashioned New England spider cake, the direct descendant of the old English griddle cake. The fruit best suited to the bannock is the firm, small black huckleberry. The large, blue juicy berry is apt to crush in the mixing with the spoon.
Carefully pick over the firm, black huckleberries, a quart to a bannock, wash them and lay them on a towel to dry, making the dough as follows:
Sift a pint of flour with a teaspoonful of salt and two heaping teaspoonfuls of baking powder; chop into the flour two large tablespoonfuls of butter and mix in about a pint of water--enough to make a soft dough which will receive the berries without breaking them.
Have ready a thick iron spider or old-fashioned frying pan, moderately heated and containing about a teaspoonful of melted butter. Mix the huckleberries through the dough without crushing them, press the dough gently over the bottom of the spider and smooth the top by wetting it with a blade of a bread, flat knife. Make sure there is plenty of butter to brown the bottom of the bannock. If there is not it will burn. If the pan is kept over a moderate heat for about twenty to thirty minutes, and not allowed to become charred for lack of the drying medium, the cooking will be successfully accomplished. The bannock is eaten hot with butter and sometimes with sugar and cream. It is one of the most delicious of all the breakfast breads.