Bannock Sacrilege

OK, I'm probably about to get flamed, but MY secret bannock recipe is: 1 part Bisquick, plus some water.

cub scout recipe.

I’ve done it. It’s actually the best way to make an edible bannock.

Well, maybe flammable (flame worthy?), but I use Jiffy mixes for muffins, biscuits, cakes, and brownies in my JMO. Just add water. They used to have a just add water icing mix which was great on their chocolate cake but dropped it, sadly.

I like to make real food in the outdoors, but steamlining recipes saves a lot of work. Nothing wrong with Jiffy or Bisquick. I like prepared dough that comes in a tube for pizza, turnovers, dumplings and all kinds of things. Once people have lived in the outdoors a couple of days food becomes something to look forward to. We take turns making dinner for the group, and there is a little competitiveness to make something good.

The old way to make bannock was to make a depression in a flour sack and mix the ingredients right there in the sack. Salt, baking powder and some fat, that's it. Adding other stuff like raisins or cinammon is totally optional. I have made bread and biscuits lots of times but I do not add enough fat. That's why I like the prepared dough.

I like to make mine with either wheat flour or cornmeal. I use lard with a little salt, baking powder …occasionally cinnamon and raisins. I guess one is never to cut with a knife. I look forward on layover days to lots of coffee, bannock with spray butter and honey. Good food is comfort, energy, recuperation.

I think as long you make it and enjoy it that is what really matters.

If by spray butter you mean


I highly recommend upgrading to Trader Joe's ghee.


Much better.

Thanks Bill, I will look into this!

Bob.

I call Sacrilige clickbait. lol.
Merely taking a shortcut doesn't suggest a sin as much as it does a convenience. Bisquick still contains the basics of bannock, so no big deal I'd say. An off-the-shelf biscuit mix isn't outside the realm of modern day simplifying. Kinda like coffee creamer. Or instant coffee for that matter.
However I found the Bisquick didn't save me much effort. I quite enjoy pre-trip prep of making my own bannock mix. YMMV
Sacrilige bannock (for me) might be the addition of Hass avocado, Madagascar vanilla, or Hawaiian pineapple. interesting and flavourful, but...
I might already be guilty of bannock sacrilige for adding jalapeños and ham for a breakfast option, or dried cherries as a snack version.
The bread family is a large one, always room for a new extended family member.

And for those who prefer a video....

LanceR,

Excellent post! I loved the video - gave me great idea ... big bag of Biscuit dough and powdered milk ( which I take anyway ) ... take a break after a long portage - quick coffee and biscuit with honey - back to paddling. Seriously gonna have to give this a try.

@Bob B. , my mom has been gone for 50 years now but I still have memories of her using a homemade version of Bisquick on back country trips and camping trips to make biscuits, dumplings, cobbler topping, pancakes etc. We used a lot of it. She used to make it 5-pounds at a time and store it in quart canning jars.

My wife and I use powdered whole milk (Nido), powdered egg, heavy cream powder etc to make up baking mixes for our trips. I often light a backpacking stove while setting up camp and use a now discontinued Bakepacker to make a pre-packaged quick bread, muffin or cake mix for a snack to hold us until dinner.



I haven't used biscuit mix and twizzle stick as shown in the Maine guide video for about 20 years but am planning to for our spring trips which will be starting an about 3-4 weeks. Mixing in some dried fruit bits and/or sprinkling a bit of cinnamon sugar over the dough before baking makes a passable sweet biscuit, too.

@billconner , when asked what ghee is we joke that ghee is what clarified butter wants to be when it grows up.

We keep ghee on the kitchen counter and it's one of the staple things we take on the road whether we take the camper or are living out of our packs. You can make your own with a net yield of around 13 ounces from a pound of unsalted butter. We use a recipe from America's Test Kitchen:

Place butter (we do two pounds at a time) in a heavy dutch oven, without the lid, and set it in a 250* F oven for 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 hours until the water has fully evaporated and the milk solids are deep golden brown. An enameled Dutch oven helps to see the milk solids. Alternatively, a fairly heavy oven-safe pot works well, too. Then strain through cheesecloth to remove the milk solids. We use a pint canning jar for each pound of butter we start with.

Ghee will keep on the counter for 3 months or so and for as much as a year in the fridge..... Yeah, sure it will. Like it's going to be there that long


Lance

Buying it at Trader Joe's is so easy though. And so many other good things there to take camping.

I have a bakepacker but honestly like my jello mold oven more. Crusty outsides and top. Cakes, muffins, biscuits, and even pizza - though a little calzone like.

I did a trip with Chicago Red from BWCA
COM and one day he made yeast bread just using pot and frypan as a Dutch oven. Very very good. Of course it was Erma Brombeck that said when your hungry, cardboard with ketchup tastes good.

and old trick for powdered skim milk is to make it with warm water and add a little creamer or unsalted butter to it to add some fat content, then put it in the coldest pool you can find- so far the only one to realize it wasn't whole milk was the guy that guzzled a couple of pints of the still-warm concoction...

scoutergriz said:

and old trick for powdered skim milk is to make it with warm water and add a little creamer or unsalted butter to it to add some fat content, then put it in the coldest pool you can find- so far the only one to realize it wasn't whole milk was the guy that guzzled a couple of pints of the still-warm concoction...

Click to expand...

Or just use Nido whole dried milk if it's available. We buy the big cans and store it in vacuum sealed canning jars to keep it fresh. It keeps for years that way.



Lance

LanceR said:

vacuum sealed canning jars

Click to expand...

?? short description?

LanceR said:

Or just use Nido whole dried milk if it's available. We buy the big cans and store it in vacuum sealed canning jars to keep it fresh. It keeps for years that way.

Click to expand...

Nido is my secret for great home made banock mix.
I have kept a #10 can of Nido bagged in the freezer for a long time. Seems to preserve it well enough.

billconner said:

?? short description?

Click to expand...

Pretty much every vacuum sealer, whether the waffle bag style such as Foodsaver or the commercial chamber vacuum sealers, has a port to plug in jar sealers, vacuum storage containers, etc.


They work with standard regular and wide mouth canning jars and a lid. Just place the lid on the clean rim of a jar, slip the sealing attachment over the neck of the jar, plug the hose into the sealer and turn the sealer on. We find that using a slight twisting motion when pulling the sealing attachment off the jar neck reduces the chance of breaking the seal on the jar. If you're careful when removing the lid it can be use at lease a dozen times.

We dehydrate a lot of foods for the back country and buy a lot of bulk freeze dried foods to make up our own meals (for backpacking trips in particular). And we use canning jars to extend the storage life of bulk spices and herbs, dehydrated and freeze dried foods and bulk purchased powders that would otherwise degrade in storage.

In these pictures are dehydrated cooked ground beef, deydrated fresh spinach, home dried mushrooms (store bought and wild) black beans freeze dried cubed beef, chicken and turkey, freeze dried ground beef, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, corn, sweet potato, potato, strawberries, raspberries, black berries, blueberries and who knows what all else. Add in homemade soup bases, dried whole milk and buttermilk, spray dried butted crystals, Ova Easy eggs, dehydrated eggs, spray dried cream powder, sour cream powder, peanut butter powder etc and all that along with a big variety of starches means we can make a huge variety of lightweight meals for when weight really matters.

And we don't make anywhere near as many types or the amounts of cured meats and sausages as we did when we had a smokehouse and processed our own critters on our NY farm but we still have a few big sausage making days each year with members of our fire department and make sausage for friends and neighbors so we have a lot of cure mixes, spices and herbs vacuum sealed in jars, too.









Lance

Perfect description, Use ours for storing bulk camp food and dried herbs.

I've never even seen Nido up here in canada...