From Open Jar Collective
Dumfries, like most Scottish towns, has a distinctive lunchtime snack—the toasted Panini.
First referenced in a 16th-century Italian cookbook, Panino (derived from the Italian pane, meaning “bread”) is traditionally a grilled sandwich made with slices of porchetta, popular in Central Italy. Panini became trendy in Milanese bars known as Paninoteche in the 1970s and 1980s, and later gained popularity in New York.
The term Paninaro came to describe a fashionable young person who was highly image-conscious.
Through the dominance of American fast food culture, Panini have become ubiquitous in Scotland, alongside white sliced bread toasties and French baguettes. All of these breads are made from highly refined strong wheat flours, which are difficult to produce in Scotland. Due to the country’s shorter growing season, locally grown wheat has a much lower protein content—suitable for baking but lacking the elastic gluten needed for conventional bread-making.
Scotland’s most successful cereal crop is barley, once commonly used in homes to bake bannocks.
According to NFU Scotland, of the two million tonnes of Scottish barley produced in 2013, 55% was used as animal feed, 35% went to whisky malting, and only a small proportion was sold as pearl barley or milled into flour for human consumption.
Bere (pronounced “bear”) is a six-row barley variety that has been cultivated in Scotland for thousands of years. Quite possibly Britain’s oldest cereal grain still in commercial cultivation, Bere was likely introduced by Viking settlers. It has adapted to growing in soils with low pH and in regions with extended daylight hours, making it particularly well-suited to Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles. This hardy grain grows rapidly, sown in spring and harvested in summer. Beremeal was among the earliest flours used to make bannocks.
Robert Burns once described southern Scotland as a “land o’ cakes.” He wasn’t referring to desserts, but to oatcakes and barley bannocks, which would have been baked on an iron girdle over the fire.
“In Scotland, amongst the rural population generally, the girdle until recent times took the place of the oven, the bannock of the loaf.”
F. Marian McNeil, 1929
In The Scots Kitchen, F. Marian McNeill suggests that the name bannock appears in records from 1572 and derives from the Latin panicum, possibly due to the influence of the Church. It may originally have referred to Communion bread.
Bannocks can vary widely—from soda breads, scones, and pancakes to a sweet, fruity tea loaf, as seen in the famous Selkirk Bannock—but they typically contain some barley meal. After testing numerous recipes, I found that the best result was F. Marian McNeill’s “Modern Method”, using Beremeal from Barony Mills in Orkney (which is available through Greencity
Bannocks o’ bear meal, Bannocks o’ barley,
Here’s to the Highlandman’s bannocks o’ barley.
Wha, in a brulzie, will first cry a parley?
Never the lads wi’ the bannocks o’ barley.
Bannocks o’ bear meal, Bannocks o’ barley,
Here’s to the Highlandman’s bannocks o’ barley.
Wha, in his wae days, were loyal to Charlie?
Wha but the lads wi’ the bannocks o’ barley!
Bannocks o’ bear meal, Bannocks o’ barley,
Here’s to the Highlandman’s bannocks o’ barley.
Robert Burns, 1794
