History
Michaelmas is a one of the Church’s holy days that is extremely rich in traditions from all around the world. From goose to ginger to blackberries to bannock, this holiday has an especially large amount of culinary dishes associated with it. Today we’re highlighting and combining two of them for your eating pleasure: bannock served with blackberry jam!
The Bannock
Though less well-known than the St. Michael goose feast that became popular in the British Isles, the bannock is also a well-established Michaelmas tradition that originates from Scotland. “Bannock” is the Scottish term for an unleavened morsel, a dish that came to be connected with this feast as its celebratory cake.
It is often made up of equal parts barley, rye, and oats (many flour variations exist, and we opted for an accessible oats and all-purpose flour combination) along with milk. The pastry is then slathered with a creamy egg, cream, and butter mixture before cooking on the stovetop. The Scotts even had a special stone for cooking the bannock, much like our pizza stones.
Blackberries
Second, blackberries come from a legend about St. Michael the Archangel. The legend might be a little “out there” for some, but in good fun we wanted to include a nod to it in our post. Plus, if you include a side of blackberry jam with your bannock you’ll find that the two pair perfectly!
If you will recall from our post on St. Michael and All Angels, this feast commemorates all of God’s angels, especially the triumph of St. Michael over the dragon in Revelation. Scripture tells us that St. Michael cast Satan out from heaven. But legend then tells us that Satan descended to earth and fell into a blackberry bush, which he then cursed. For that reason, blackberries are enjoyed on this feast day, but not after, since the curse was said to be the reason why blackberries are no longer good to eat after September 29th, which falls roughly at the end of their season.
St. Michael and All Angels Bannock
We hope you enjoy this freshly baked bannock and jam paired with a hot cup of coffee. We have just a couple of helpful tips for you if you decide to try it!
First, be forewarned: the texture of the bannock is, by nature, dense. Traditionally, it is thought that no leavening agent was used to make this kind of bread. We added baking powder, which should provide at least a little bit of rise. Nevertheless, we would recommend enjoying this treat on Michaelmas itself and not to let it sit for more than one day in order to prevent it from getting too hard.
Second, to prevent the bannock from breaking, we suggest forming the disk so that it is smaller than the size of your skillet. You might consider splitting this recipe into two bannocks if you wish. This will allow you to drop the bread into the pan more easily without risking it breaking. Flipping it over will also become easier if you leave yourself working space between the edge of the bannock and the side of the pan.
Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups oats
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
¼ cup honey
½ cup milk
Egg Wash Mixture
1 egg
¼ cup cream
4 ounces butter, melted and slightly cooled
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Preheat a lightly greased cast iron skillet on the stove on medium-low heat.
- Using a food processor, blitz the oats until they become a fine flour. In a bowl, combine oat flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Cut in the butter and then add the honey and milk. (Mix the honey into the milk before adding to the dry ingredients.)
- Form into a ball and then press down into a disk.
- Combine the egg wash ingredients (egg, butter, and cream) and slather one side of the bannock. Lay that side face-down on the skillet and cook for about 1 minute. Meanwhile, slather the other side with the mixture.
- Continue flipping and slathering until the cream mixture is used up or until the bannock is browned enough on each side. Then, place the skillet in the oven to bake through. This might take another 10-30 minutes depending on how thick the bannock is.
- Remove from oven and cut into wedges and enjoy with butter and blackberry jam.
St. Michael Bannock
Ingredients
- 2 C oats
- 2 C all-purpose flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ C butter
- ¼ C honey
- ½ C milk
Egg Wash Mixture
- 1 egg
- ¼ C cream
- 4 oz butter melted and slightly cooled
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Preheat a lightly greased cast iron skillet on the stove on medium-low heat.
- Using a food processor, blitz the oats until they become a fine flour. In a bowl, combine oat flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Cut in the butter and then add the honey and milk. (Mix the honey into the milk before adding to the dry ingredients.)
- Form into a ball and then press down into a disk.
- Combine the egg wash ingredients (egg, butter, and cream) and slather one side of the bannock. Lay that side face-down on the skillet and cook for about 1 minute. Meanwhile, slather the other side with the mixture.
- Continue flipping and slathering until the cream mixture is used up or until the bannock is browned enough on each side. Then, place the skillet in the oven to bake through. This might take another 10-30 minutes depending on how thick the bannock is.
- Remove from oven and cut into wedges and enjoy with butter and blackberry jam.
I look forward to trying this recipe.
Gods Blessings!
Peggy
We hope you enjoy it!
Blessings!
Thank you for sharing this traditional recipe in lieu of St. Michaelmas . I look forward to preparing it today . Since where I live , blackberries are in abundance ( except they have mostly died off by now ) I’m planning on serving it up with some delicious Oregon grown blackberry jam . God bless you !
This recipe was a pain to get through. I followed what steps were given, but my original dough was too crumbly to come together. After adding more milk I was eventually able to form a ball/disc but one could see that keeping it that way was going to be a challenge. Sure enough, on the third or fourth flip it started to fall apart. The next flip destroyed it even further. I decided to cut my losses and just go for the baking portion. However, there was no way I could bring this recipe to the potluck like I had agreed to (a Michaelmas dance put on by a friend) so I had to try again. This is where I decided to form little mini sized versions so that I could control the flipping more easily. This time I added an additional fifty percent milk off the top and that still wasn’t enough. I probably had to add a full extra cup of milk to the recipe for it to stop just being crumbly. Now let’s talk about the “egg wash”. The instructions are to mix egg, cream, and butter… Okay. How does one mix butter into cream and egg? I ended up melting the butter first and then blitzing the mixture with my immersion blender. This worked, but goodness was it not intuitive.
The end results are a scone adjacent quick bread. It’s dense as they say and if you can get past the terrible process of making them they are tasty, but I don’t recommend trying this form of bannock. Find yourself a better recipe.
Angela, thank you for your feedback! I am sorry to hear about your frustration. You are right that it is a rustic scone recipe hence the smaller liquid quantity. Adding any more than ½ cup would overwhelm the dry ingredients in this recipe. I would like to offer that it is important to spoon and level the flour so as to not add too much. In terms of the egg mixture, you are right that the butter must be melted first, mixed with the other ingredients, and then lathered on liberally. I will be sure to note this! Finally (and this might be the most important point to your comment) the crumbling will happen if you continue flipping once the disk is set. This might only be 1-2 flips on the pan because as the scone starts cooking, the buttery layers (yum!) will begin warming up inside. At this point, pop it in the oven to finish it off! Once again, I take your feedback very seriously, and I thank you for taking the time to leave a review!
This recipe is a delicious! We enjoyed them for breakfast with some vanilla yogurt and it paired really well! But they would also be tasty with jam or whipped cream.
Also very easy to make with gluten free flour since it is already a dense scone and doesn’t need to rise. 🙂