Survival Bannock: 1000 Calorie Scottish Waybread (Gluten Free).

Learning to make survival foods for camping, outside work, or other trekking is important. Sedentary lives have taught us to not try not to overeat, while manual labor, extreme cold weather, and strenuous activity throw the “2000 Calorie” diet out the window. Camping in cold weather can increase your caloric needs into the 3600–6000 Calorie range depending on your level of activity. If I ever needed to make these for survival, I’d like to at least have tried making them once, and learn some of the pitfalls.

I ran across an interesting experiment by The Geoff on his blog based on Tom Langhorne’s (Fandabi) Survival Bannock recipe (shown below). Geoff is growing samples from the bannocks over time to see what microbial cultures might form in place. My personal opinion is that, if the water activity is low, nothing dangerous will form — but I hope Geoff might confirm that. I think he’s more interested in what grows, and not necessarily looking at specific goals of safety. I honestly would like to try a cheese or sausage mold inoculation to see what happens.

Fandabi mentions gluten free flour in his video, and I thought I’d give it it a try — to see how it might affect the final product. You can watch his original video here: