This is a pretty cool thread.
I first ran across the term, "frying-pan bread," in Tough Trip Through Paradise, by Andrew Garcia. A bear had raided his camp and opened up and scattered a sack of flour. "Susie," who was Garcia's Nez Perce wife, had gathered up as much of the flour as she could and then made some bread. Here is the quote: “Susie had finished broiling the venison for our supper and along with it had made coffee and frying-pan bread. The bread contained considerable fine gravel and sand that Susie had raked up with the flour, but I was now used to squaw cooking and it tasted good.” pp. 319-320
More recently, I was reading Col. William Pickett's "Memories of a Bear Hunter," in the Boone & Crockett book, Hunting at High Altitudes: “Here I met the Episcopal Bishop of Saskatchewan, on the way to his bishopric in the Northwest Territories. His residence, 600 miles west of Fort Garry or Winnipeg, covered a very large district. The winter before he had traveled two thousand miles by dog-train, his team consisting of three or four dogs, which covered about forty miles a day. He camped where night found him, sleeping on the snow. His food three times a day was pemmican, tea, and frying-pan bread.” p.15
I've read most of Theodore Roosevelt's American hunting stories, but didn't really pay attention to the reference to bread. After reading @Red Owl 's post, I went back and looked, and found the following in The Wilderness Hunter:
“After three or four days of rest, and of feasting on trout – a welcome relief to the monotony of frying-pan bread and coarse salt pork…” p.133
“At noon we halted beside a little brook for a bite of lunch – a chunk of cold frying-pan bread, which was all we had.” p. 135
“Then we supped on sugarless tea, frying-pan bread, and quantities of bear meat, fried or roasted -- and how very good it tasted…” p. 139
“The white goats were too musky to eat, and we saw nothing else to shoot; so we speedily became reduced to tea, and to bread baked in the frying-pan, save every now and then for a feast on the luscious mountain blueberries.” p. 141
“Each merely put on his jacket with a loaf of frying-pan bread and a paper of salt stuffed into the pockets. We were cumbered with nothing save our rifles and cartridges.” p. 156
Pickett was writing about a hunting trip in 1876, and Garcia was referring to events in 1878 or 1879. I think Roosevelt's time-frame was in the 1880's. However, all three of these gentlemen were traveling in the northern plains and Rockies, specifically in North Dakota, Montana, and in Garcia's case, probably the Idaho panhandle. This leads me to think maybe "frying pan bread" was a regional expression current during the later 19th century. I haven't run across it in other readings from the early western frontier. As for exactly what "frying pan bread" was, I think it was likely another name for bannock, or galette. Isaac Cowie, a Hudson's Bay Company clerk and author of The Company of Adventurers, wrote:
“Flour bannocks, made with water and a little pemmican grease, without any rising, and generally only half ‘done,’ by exposing them on twigs and frying pans before the camp fire were a luxury attained by the boatmen starting from Red River and York Factory, which was denied to their fellows in the interior, where the flour of wheat was as scarce and more valuable than flour gold, and animal food, generally dried, was the only sustenance afforded by the country, and their sole reliance.” p. 121
“…Hibert and I pushed on ahead, after we had remained long enough with the brigade to use their frying pans in cooking enough bannock to serve us to Fort Ellice.” p. 176
“…that rare and costly dainty of the time and place – bannocks, made with lots of buffalo fat and baked before an open fire in a frying pan.” p. 255
As noted above, another name for this type of bread which I have seen in the literature of the Canadian frontier is galette, a French term referring to a flat, round cake of pastry or bread. This was the term used by Robert Kennicott, although his description is otherwise pretty consistent with Cowie's:
“Near this lake Mr. Hubbard found the nest of a ruffed grouse, containing five eggs. These our cook used in making our galette, thereby giving us quite a treat. This galette is the only form of bread used on a [canoe] voyage, that is, when voyageurs are so fortunate as to have any flour at all. It is made in a very simple style – the flour bag is opened, and a small hollow made in the flour, into which a little water is poured, and the dough is thus mixed in the bag; nothing is added, except some dirt from the cook’s unwashed hands with which he kneads it into flat cakes, which are baked before the fire in a frying pan, or cooked in grease. To pampered dyspeptics a breakfast of galette and salt pork might not seem very inviting, but let them try it on a northern voyage, after traveling five hours in the morning without eating, and they will find it otherwise.” p. 57
That quote was from Kennicott, Robert. (1942). “The Journal of Robert Kennicott, May 19, 1859 – February 11, 1862.” In Northwestern University Studies in the Social Sciences, Number IV, The First Scientific Exploration of Russian America and the Purchase of Alaska. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University. I have not found a digitized version of this publication online, but it was published in the form of a hardbound book, and one of the dealers on AbeBooks may have it. Kennicott's journal is a very good read, for those interested in the Canadian frontier and fur trade in the mid-19th century. Kennicott himself died young, in Alaska, but he was quite a character... A trained scientist who virtually "went native":
Anyway, Isaac Cowie was originally from the Orkney Islands, and he would have probably been familiar with bannock from his upbringing. He said the bannock of the Canadian wilderness was made without "rising" (leavening), and he, Roosevelt, and Kennicott all specifically noted that the bread was baked in a frying-pan, not fried, although more or less grease was evidently added when it was available. It was also considered something of a luxury in the interior of the country. The Indian frybread with which I am familiar is fried in deep, hot fat. I discussed frybread recently with a Seminole lady who told me the only ingredients they used (other than the hot fat or oil) were self-rising flour and water, but she acknowledged that there was a leavening agent and salt already mixed in with the self-rising flour. Her frybread was really good. In any event, I get the impression that bannock, galette, and "frying-pan bread" were probably regional names for the same thing, which was evidently different from today's frybread.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
I first ran across the term, "frying-pan bread," in Tough Trip Through Paradise, by Andrew Garcia. A bear had raided his camp and opened up and scattered a sack of flour. "Susie," who was Garcia's Nez Perce wife, had gathered up as much of the flour as she could and then made some bread. Here is the quote: “Susie had finished broiling the venison for our supper and along with it had made coffee and frying-pan bread. The bread contained considerable fine gravel and sand that Susie had raked up with the flour, but I was now used to squaw cooking and it tasted good.” pp. 319-320
More recently, I was reading Col. William Pickett's "Memories of a Bear Hunter," in the Boone & Crockett book, Hunting at High Altitudes: “Here I met the Episcopal Bishop of Saskatchewan, on the way to his bishopric in the Northwest Territories. His residence, 600 miles west of Fort Garry or Winnipeg, covered a very large district. The winter before he had traveled two thousand miles by dog-train, his team consisting of three or four dogs, which covered about forty miles a day. He camped where night found him, sleeping on the snow. His food three times a day was pemmican, tea, and frying-pan bread.” p.15
I've read most of Theodore Roosevelt's American hunting stories, but didn't really pay attention to the reference to bread. After reading @Red Owl 's post, I went back and looked, and found the following in The Wilderness Hunter:
“After three or four days of rest, and of feasting on trout – a welcome relief to the monotony of frying-pan bread and coarse salt pork…” p.133
“At noon we halted beside a little brook for a bite of lunch – a chunk of cold frying-pan bread, which was all we had.” p. 135
“Then we supped on sugarless tea, frying-pan bread, and quantities of bear meat, fried or roasted -- and how very good it tasted…” p. 139
“The white goats were too musky to eat, and we saw nothing else to shoot; so we speedily became reduced to tea, and to bread baked in the frying-pan, save every now and then for a feast on the luscious mountain blueberries.” p. 141
“Each merely put on his jacket with a loaf of frying-pan bread and a paper of salt stuffed into the pockets. We were cumbered with nothing save our rifles and cartridges.” p. 156
Pickett was writing about a hunting trip in 1876, and Garcia was referring to events in 1878 or 1879. I think Roosevelt's time-frame was in the 1880's. However, all three of these gentlemen were traveling in the northern plains and Rockies, specifically in North Dakota, Montana, and in Garcia's case, probably the Idaho panhandle. This leads me to think maybe "frying pan bread" was a regional expression current during the later 19th century. I haven't run across it in other readings from the early western frontier. As for exactly what "frying pan bread" was, I think it was likely another name for bannock, or galette. Isaac Cowie, a Hudson's Bay Company clerk and author of The Company of Adventurers, wrote:
“Flour bannocks, made with water and a little pemmican grease, without any rising, and generally only half ‘done,’ by exposing them on twigs and frying pans before the camp fire were a luxury attained by the boatmen starting from Red River and York Factory, which was denied to their fellows in the interior, where the flour of wheat was as scarce and more valuable than flour gold, and animal food, generally dried, was the only sustenance afforded by the country, and their sole reliance.” p. 121
“…Hibert and I pushed on ahead, after we had remained long enough with the brigade to use their frying pans in cooking enough bannock to serve us to Fort Ellice.” p. 176
“…that rare and costly dainty of the time and place – bannocks, made with lots of buffalo fat and baked before an open fire in a frying pan.” p. 255
As noted above, another name for this type of bread which I have seen in the literature of the Canadian frontier is galette, a French term referring to a flat, round cake of pastry or bread. This was the term used by Robert Kennicott, although his description is otherwise pretty consistent with Cowie's:
“Near this lake Mr. Hubbard found the nest of a ruffed grouse, containing five eggs. These our cook used in making our galette, thereby giving us quite a treat. This galette is the only form of bread used on a [canoe] voyage, that is, when voyageurs are so fortunate as to have any flour at all. It is made in a very simple style – the flour bag is opened, and a small hollow made in the flour, into which a little water is poured, and the dough is thus mixed in the bag; nothing is added, except some dirt from the cook’s unwashed hands with which he kneads it into flat cakes, which are baked before the fire in a frying pan, or cooked in grease. To pampered dyspeptics a breakfast of galette and salt pork might not seem very inviting, but let them try it on a northern voyage, after traveling five hours in the morning without eating, and they will find it otherwise.” p. 57
That quote was from Kennicott, Robert. (1942). “The Journal of Robert Kennicott, May 19, 1859 – February 11, 1862.” In Northwestern University Studies in the Social Sciences, Number IV, The First Scientific Exploration of Russian America and the Purchase of Alaska. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University. I have not found a digitized version of this publication online, but it was published in the form of a hardbound book, and one of the dealers on AbeBooks may have it. Kennicott's journal is a very good read, for those interested in the Canadian frontier and fur trade in the mid-19th century. Kennicott himself died young, in Alaska, but he was quite a character... A trained scientist who virtually "went native":
Anyway, Isaac Cowie was originally from the Orkney Islands, and he would have probably been familiar with bannock from his upbringing. He said the bannock of the Canadian wilderness was made without "rising" (leavening), and he, Roosevelt, and Kennicott all specifically noted that the bread was baked in a frying-pan, not fried, although more or less grease was evidently added when it was available. It was also considered something of a luxury in the interior of the country. The Indian frybread with which I am familiar is fried in deep, hot fat. I discussed frybread recently with a Seminole lady who told me the only ingredients they used (other than the hot fat or oil) were self-rising flour and water, but she acknowledged that there was a leavening agent and salt already mixed in with the self-rising flour. Her frybread was really good. In any event, I get the impression that bannock, galette, and "frying-pan bread" were probably regional names for the same thing, which was evidently different from today's frybread.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
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