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Oatmeal Bannocks
Rub half an ounce of fresh butter into two and a half pounds of Scotch oatmeal, and stir briskly in as much lukewarm water as will make it into a stiff paste. Sprinkle some oatmeal on the pastry-board, and spread the mixture out into a round cake, about half an inch thick and four inches in diameter. Bake in a moderate oven for one hour. Sufficient for ten or twelve persons. Probable cost, 1s.
A plain meal-and-water bannock, given here in the book's terse reference style. Two details need attention before you start: the meal itself, and the fact that the stated quantity will not make one cake.
- Scotch oatmeal is not rolled oatsThe recipe assumes stone-ground medium oatmeal, or pinhead (steel-cut) meal ground down. Rolled oats absorb water differently and give a slack, flabby paste; look for medium or fine oatmeal sold for porridge and baking.
- The quantity and the cake do not matchTwo and a half pounds of meal will not produce one four-inch round half an inch thick. Read the dimensions as the size of each bannock and divide the paste accordingly; that gives a dozen or more cakes from the stated quantity.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350F; the book gives no temperature. If you scale down to a single small batch, check at 25 to 30 minutes rather than trusting the full hour.
- An hour is generousA half-inch cake of oatmeal paste is cooked through well before an hour at that heat. The long time may reflect the uneven, falling heat of a range oven and a wish for a thoroughly dry, keepable biscuit. Bake until firm, dry and lightly coloured; longer than that only hardens them.
- No salt is givenThe omission is characteristic of the book's brevity. A teaspoon of salt per pound of meal suits the traditional style and much improves the result.
- Lukewarm water, added by feelThe amount is unstated, and meals vary. Add gradually to a stiff paste that just holds together -- wetter than shortcrust, drier than a batter. Work it quickly and lightly; oatmeal has no gluten and handling only makes it crumble.
- Half an ounce of butter is not a mistakeAbout a tablespoon to two and a half pounds of meal is barely enough to grease the paste. This is a frugal everyday bannock, not a rich one; extra butter will make it short and fragile rather than better.
- Probable cost, 1sOne shilling for the whole batch, oatmeal being among the cheaper staples of the period.
- Serving and keepingBest split and eaten warm with butter, cheese or broth. Cooled thoroughly and kept dry they will keep for several days.
A bannock is a flat round cake of meal, the word used across Scotland and northern England for cakes of oatmeal, barley or pease meal. Traditionally such cakes were baked not in an oven but on a girdle -- a flat iron plate over the fire -- and often finished standing before the fire to dry them out. This recipe transfers the job to the oven and drops the girdle altogether. Oatmeal was the everyday grain of the north and cheaper than wheat flour, which was the more aspirational baking material. "Scotch oatmeal" here points to the stone-ground meal that gives a bannock its texture.