Recipe - Algonquin Johnny Cakes

When I was cooking these Caribbean Cakes over my Algonquin Park campfire recently a light flickered on that said hey, this is pretty much the same as that Samoan Fa’apapa you made last month, and it’s very near the Scottish Bannock Bread that Martin makes when he comes camping, which in turn is sort of near the Australian Damper Bread that my guide made that day we went out to Kakadu, which is practically sat next to the Boston Brown Bread that my partner’s Mum used to make in New England! And it’s only a tsp of bicarb soda away from the North American indigenous Bannock that has sooo many varieties, which are actually universally known as Johnny Cakes, or should that be ‘Journey Cakes’...

Some choose to argue for hours about matters of grammar, or minor points regarding historical references, or they allow cosmetic differences in recipes to obscure the similarities. But I’d rather dwell among the things that join us and in doing so see the meeting point between the lady frying up Johnny Cakes on a tropical island, and my great grandmother making the cakes that my father’s hometown, Chorley in the north of England, was once famous for. 

And English fish and chips mirror a dish invented in France, and French toast is the cousin of the older ‘poor knights toast’ of England, and Middle Eastern shakshuka is sister to Italian bolognese, the filling for Greek peppers, British shepherd’s pie, and Egyptian macaroni bechamel. And then there’s paella, which has offered so much to my Indian dhal! My mouth waters over the historical and human connections as much as it does over the thought of the food. 

I wanted a solid bread or cake recipe that could cook over a campfire, in a frying pan, with the minimum of oil and fuss. I tend to camp lightweight and try to be healthy, hence the aversion to too much oil (I don’t want to carry or eat lots of it). I looked into traditional indigenous and early settler recipes for Johnny Cakes and Bannock in North America and whilst they tasted ok they were clearly from a world without much baking powder, and in the case of George Sears - or Nessmuk as he was known - from characters who had barely disguised urges to distance themselves from more established recipes in Europe. So I took hints from them, then scanned other cultures for their methods, looking into the paratha and naan of India, the flatbreads of Arabia, and the roti of many regions. Here is what I came up with. This recipe should make 5 cakes. If it makes more, or less, your cakes might be too big or small to rise as well as they could. 

Ingredients 

2 cups flour (brown or white, or a mix). 

1 tsp each of baking powder and salt. 

1 cup of water. 

Optional; If you'd like them sweet, add a couple of tbsp of sugar. Or, if you want to make a cake more suitable for a sweeter meal you can use 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of corn flour. You can also add 1 or 2 tbsp of both ground flax and chia to the dry mix if you’d like to make it all a little healthier and get your omega oil’s in without any fuss. 

Method

Mix the dry ingredients together with your spoon. Make a well in the middle and add the water and mix until the dough comes together and is sticky. 

Knead by hand a little. Not too much. If you are kneading bread which uses yeast to rise you want to knead a lot to activate the gluten. But with baking powder the less kneading the better. About 20 to 30 kneads should be enough to make sure everything is mixed well together. Leave the dough to develop for 15 minutes in the warmest place possible. 

Roll the dough into a tube shape and cut into 5 slices. Squash them with the flat of your palm so that they are roughly circular and about 1½ cm thick. This depth is very important. You want them thin enough so that hot air gathers inside to puff them up, but not so thick that they won’t be cooked all the way through. 1½ cm seems to be an ideal depth to achieve this. 

Heat 2 tbsp of oil in your frying pan, get it hot enough so that if you put a little dough in there it starts to fizz immediately. Then put your cakes in the pan. Don’t crowd them. You need to be able to move them about so if you have to put them in 2 or 3 at a time, do that. They’ll probably need 5 minutes per side. Keep an eye on them. You want them to go golden brown but not black. Once they’ve had 5 minutes on both sides they would hopefully have doubled in height and are ready. 

You can try to get the sides brown if you like by standing them on end. It’s easily done if you use a spatula and spoon or knife. 

You can use the dough to make campfire pizzas or calzone. The pizzas aren’t my favourite but the calzone are ok (although when you’re camping a little fried dough with toppings or fillings is nearly always very welcome). The recipe is the same as for the Johnny Cakes, only you flatten the cake out for the pizza and fry it lightly one side before flipping it and loading the toppings on. And for the calzone you lightly fry it both sides before folding it over the filling, then fry it for 2 or 3 minutes each side. I used toppings and fillings that travel well and that I’m likely to take camping with me such as mushroom, red pepper, onion, garlic, herbs, and packaged soya mozarella-like cheese, and I fried it all a little to soften up before I put them on the pizza or inside the calzone dough. 

Make sure that you’re using fresh baking powder. So often we campers pack up our kit for the season and store our dry food supplies for the following year. If you do this with baking powder it might not work well, so make sure you use powder that is at least fresh that season. 

If you’d like to learn more about Indigenous Johnny Cake recipes (they also go by other names such as Bannock Bread, or Flatbread) have a look at this resource., which has 31 recipes in it - https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/rsi/fnb/bannockawareness.pdf 

‘Woodcraft’ is a fascinating read from Nessmuck, a 19th century woodsman, complete with no-fuss recipes that might suit your style, and excellent advice for building a camp. Google it, it’s available online for free from several sources.