BANNOCK, BOLILLOS AND BREAD:CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE BAKE OVEN Our panel today will present breads of the diverse ethnic groups of Canada, Mexico and the United States. We could spend more time than we have discussing definitions and categories of food known as bread. Instead, we have used the foods which are included in both quick bread and yeast bread chapters of basic cookbooks.

On the panel with me today are Dorothy Duncan, Director of the Ontario Historical Society, Ontario, Canada and Janet Long Solis, Professor of Anthropology at Mexico University in Mexico City.

We will try to use politically correct terminology in referring to ethnic groups, although this sometimes changes so quickly that it is difficult to keep up. Currently, we are learning to say Native American rather than American Indian in the U.S., but on the Oregon State campus we're reverting to American Indian on some of the forms students fill out. We've had an unusually high number of students claiming to be Native Americans. They think that category is for those born in the U.S., and our statistics are way off. In Canada, the Indians are now called First Nations, while Janet will call the Mexican groups ____________.

We will give our presentations first, then have a few minutes for questions and sharing toward the end of the session.

We'll speak in alphabetical order by country today, beginning with Canada.

Next, Mexico.

Many Native American groups in the United States make a fried dough product called, simply, fry bread. This may be a yeast leavened bread, but more often it is chemically leavened. Before the tribes had baking powder or baking soda, they used wood ash, made by burning specific kinds of trees or bushes, like juniper, to make what some refer to as "culinary ash". My recipe from Oregon's Warm Springs Confederated Tribes calls for self© rising flour, a mixture of flour, baking powder and salt which has not been readily available in the north until fairly recently.

Fry breads vary in size and shape according to the tribe making them. The Warm Springs breads are solid ovals, as served in the lodge of the resort run by the Tribes. A colleague who lived with the Sioux in South Dakota says that fry bread must have a hole in the center for even cooking, like a donut. Other groups have three slashes in the center of their bread, or make cuts around the outside of the bread circle so it will spead apart as it cooks.

Southwestern Native Americans have been using colored cornmeal for centuries. The most popular color among the Pueblo Indians, the Navajos and the Hopis is blue cornmeal. It has a superior flavor and is thought to be more nutritious than yellow or white corn. The Navajos have used it as an important food for mothers from the time of labor until lactation ceases.

Hopi women make piki bread, a paper-thin bread baked by spreading thin layers of dough on hot rocks. Blue piki bread is the every-day color, while red or bright yellow might appear on feast days.

My favorite name for Native American breads is kneeldown bread, so called because the bread is baked in a fire pit, requiring the cook to kneel through much of the baking.

Cornmeal dumplings, made from yellow, white or blue cornmeal are often simmered in a pot of soup or stew. The Navajos make dumplings round in the winter, but flatten them a bit in the summer, believing that the round shape will cause sleet to fall during that season.

Flattened oval cornbreads were a specialty of the Southeastern Native Americans. The Indians called the breads oppones, but the European colonists shortened that to pones, a word still in use today. The Europeans brought skillets in which they baked their pones, flavored with pork fat.

The Southeastern Native Americans also make blue corn dumplings, but theirs are colored with grapes known as wild opossum grapes, or summer grapes. In the Southeast, too, the natives made ash cakes© baked in the ashes of a fire. This same batter might be baked on a hoe out in a field; called, of course, hoe cake.

The Choctaw tribe makes shuck bread by wrapping the dough in corn shucks© husks. These used to be made with hardwood ashes before the modern baking powder was known.

Bannock, the Scottish griddle bread, is made by the Native Americans in many different ways. Supposedly, they learned to make this from British colonists. There are some unique recipes for it, including the Chippewa one with cornmeal, ground hazelnuts and maple syrup. Most of the bannocks could have been taken as travel food.

Modern Southeast natives have learned to combine fruits or vegetables like sweet potato and carrot with cornmeal to make a sweet bread baked in an oven.

Central Europeans who have settled in the U.S. may make breads of their homelands at Christmas or other holiday times© for example, German stollen. My German language teacher bakes Dresdener stollen, from her childhood, each Christmas and also mails some to her brother in Germany! His wife doesn't bake and thinks stollen contains too many calories, so his sister sees that he gets this old family favorite annually.

Other families bake specialty breads at holiday or other festival times. Many Norwegians bake their soft, flat bread called "lefse or"lefser" for Chrstmas or for local Scandinavian festivals. The favorite way to serve it in the nothwest is with butter and cinnamon. One person said that her family made it for all holidays, and that Grandma started early to make enough for all the guests at family weddings. Other Scandinavian families bake cardomom©flavored braided breads for Christmas. A German family I know bakes a braided, frosted bread they call zopf at Christmas.

The popular German yeast cake, kuchen, might be made whenever favorite fruits are in season. Another family makes a beef pinwheel from bread dough, a recipe from a German grandmother.

Polish baba, an Easter yeast cake, is served with its traditional small lamb molded from sugar paste in the middle of the baba, with sugar paste eggs all around it.

Russian families may bake kulich, which is traditionally taken to midnight service at church to be blessed. Yugoslavians may make a rolled poppyseed bread ©potica©for holidays. Other central European groups will serve the same type of bread on festive occasions.

For everyday breads, families of both central European and Scandinavian ancestry rely on commercially baked breads for the wonderful sourdough ryes, pumpernickel,and crisp brotchen, although never as crisp as in Germany.

Scandinavian flatbreads that are delightfully crisp are made by commercial bakers now.

Basque sheepherder bread is still baked in iron Dutch ovens by Basque cooks, but not everyone follows the customs of slashing a cross on top or sharing the first piece with one's faithful sheepdog.

Pancakes and waffles, from European influences, are often made at home © but also frequently made from commercial mixes, or frozen waffles popped into a toaster for quick thawing and crisping.

Most cultural groups which make bread have some kind of pancake.

A very special pancake©type bread is the Russian bliny. Bliny are ritual brads origianlly used in calendar holidays and at family ceremonies. They were eaten to influence nature and human beings, says a Russian friend. The ritual use of this bread has preÈChristian origins and was connected with ancient Slavic customs.

The holiday most associated with the serving of bliny is Shrove Tuesday, a last fling before lent begins. Even though the old rituals have been forgotten, bliny may still be made on Shrove Tuesday. They are customarily served with sour cream and caviar.

At Greek Othodox churches in the US, parish women may still make the altar bread, a special recipe stamped on top with a seal. Each part of the seal has a special meaning. Greek women also make other breads for church festivals. These (koulouria and vasilopita, for example) may be flavored with mastic gum, a slightly anise©tasting gum from the mastic shrub. Greek braided bread, garnished with red©dyed hard©cooked eggs is baked for Easter. There are rituals about when the eggs should be dyed, and games involving breaking the eggs are played on Easter morning.

While most Asians traditionally eat bread only as steamed bread or dumplings, and these are usually purchased ready© made, there are a few families who make them at home. Barbecued pork is the favorite filling.

A family whose father is from the Philippines makes a steamed bun with pork an egg in the middle. They have these (chipau, phonetically) at every family get©together.

There are several small groups of Ethiopians in the US, and they like to make their native pancake©like flat bread called injera. Now that the nutritious Ethiopian grain tef is available commercially in health food stores, some cooks are making injera from tef.

Updated: Tuesday, May 22, 2007.