Soda Bread

[Mortblanc]

Bannock is a lot like soda bread, its form has changed as it became "civilized".

The bannock I learned to make when young was a simple dough skewered on a stick and baked by the fire. Now everyone wants to put raisins and currants and brown sugar and cinnamon in it, bake it at a precise heat in the oven and make a desert bread out of it!

Soda bread is the same and as soon as you mention the word folks start talking about adding flavors and fruit and using this and that instead of buttermilk or sour milk.

I love the simplicity of the original forms, especially since both were intended to be survival foods. Soda bread was not developed until the potato famine in the mid 1800s and was often the only food on the table. I think bannock has been around since before we discovered cave living.

Over here we also have corn based breads that were developed for cooking directly on the coals or on improvised surfaces which were called "ash cakes" and "hoe cakes". The modern name has been changed to "johnny cakes".

Hoe cakes were originally cooked on the flat part of a weeding hoe which was much heavier than a modern garden hoe and had a removable handle. You would knock the handle out, sit the hoe blade in the coals and cook the bread, made from corn meal and water, on the flat surface.