bannock

noun

ban·​nock ˈba-nək 

1

: a usually unleavened flat bread or biscuit made with oatmeal or barley meal

2

chiefly New England : corn bread

especially : a thin cake baked on a griddle

Examples of bannock in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Hot beverages and bannock are served at the end of the tour. —Debbie Olsen, Travel + Leisure, 18 Sep. 2023

The meal includes traditional homemade fish chowder, hot bannock, coffee, and tea – including a number of northern herbal teas. —Debbie Olsen, Travel + Leisure, 18 Sep. 2023

Also worth a visit, Whiskeyjack Art House, run by Cree artist Lana Whiskeyjack, hosts rotating exhibitions by contemporary artists and has an excellent small gift store selling bannock mix, jams, and other food items by Indigenous catering company Pei Pei Chei Ow. —Karen Gardiner, Condé Nast Traveler, 3 Dec. 2021

Every dish has an Indigenous twist, from the bannock buns on the burgers to the homemade Saskatoon berry vinaigrette served with the salad. —Debbie Olsen, Condé Nast Traveler, 28 July 2022

The menu features hearty comfort food made with traditional ingredients like bison, pickerel, bannock, berries, nuts, beans, corn, and squash, often spun into contemporary dishes like burgers, pizza, tacos, poutine, soups and salads. —Debbie Olsen, Condé Nast Traveler, 28 July 2022

Over tea and bannock, Johnston’s partner Meta Williams (a member of the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation) says that their interaction with visitors has changed a lot recently. —Karen Gardiner, Condé Nast Traveler, 26 Oct. 2022

Visitors are paired with community members on the shores of Lennox Island to prepare bannock that is baked in the sand. —Sandra MacGregor, Forbes, 3 Oct. 2021

Salmon n’ Bannock: Inspired by First Nations cuisine, the menu at this Vancouver favorite features hearty fare like boar meatballs and variations on bannock, the traditional First Nations unleavened bread. —Craig Taylor, Smithsonian, 10 July 2017

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Word History

Etymology

Scots & northern English dialect, going back to Middle English (northern) bannoke "bread baked on the hearth," going back to Old English bannuc "a small piece (of bread)," of obscure origin

Note: The word is attested in Middle English only once, as bannoke, glossed by "focacius, panis subcinericius" ("hearth bread, bread [baked] under the ashes") in the Catholicon Anglicum, an English-Latin dictionary compiled in the second half of the fifteenth century, probably in Yorkshire. The Old English word likewise occurs only once, in the glosses to Aldheim's De laude virginitatis, where healfne bannuc glosses "dimidiam partem," a "half part" of a pastry or bread. The word apparently occurs in Scottish Gaelic, as bonnach, bannach, but is likely to have been borrowed from Scots. Breton bannacʼh "drop," adduced in the Dictionary of Old English, is from an etymon common to insular Celtic (as Old Irish bannae "drop") and unlikely to be of relevance.

First Known Use

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1