'Bannock lady' cooks up gold at World Indigenous Nations Games

Tammy Cacho-Wolfe has been making bannock for so long and for so many people in Maskwacis that nowadays she's simply known as the "bannock lady."

"I love doing it and I feed thousands and thousands of people," she said.

She loves her nickname too. It came from people who knew she made bannock, but didn't know her name.

"People like kids in the schools started to say 'It's the bannock lady.' "

This week the bannock lady is living up to her name, making as many as 300 loaves of the traditional bread every day at the World Indigenous Nations Games.

That much bannock requires a 20-kilogram sack of flour. 

"I get a lot of compliments and I always tell them I learned from my grandmother Sophie Wolfe," said Cacho-Wolfe, who is from the Ermineskin First Nation in Maskwacis, south of Edmonton.

Cacho-Wolfe, 56, began learning her grandmother's secrets as soon as she could stand on a chair and reach the mixing bowl where the magic began.

"Then my mother wasn't home one day when I was about 10 years old and I tried it on my own," she remembers.

Burned first batch

She burned her first batch, but she tried again the next week and soon earned the role as the bannock maker of her family.

"A lot of love goes into it. You taste the love in it every time," she said, noting if she's having a tough day her children know straight away from how the bannock turns out.

"My kids even tell me if I'm in a bad mood 'calm down or something because your bannock gets really hard and it's not as good.' "

Cacho-Wolfe's managed to turn her passion for bannock into a job, now working as a caterer who constantly gets big orders for cultural feasts and special events.

She's currently working for her sister Toni Potts' company, Teepee Catering, which has been booked to provide the food for the games.

She's proud of her recipe, which she inherited from her grandmother after being passed through generations of the family in Maskwacis.

It has four dry and four wet ingredients, which she never weighs or measures, simply adding by feel each time.

She starts with flour, sugar, salt and baking powder, making a well in the middle where she adds water, milk, oil and an egg.

But her secret is not so much in the recipe as much as the kneading technique she's perfected over 40 years of experience.

That's what gives bannock a fluffy and light middle with a delicious golden crust, she said.  

"I've given out the recipes to hundreds of people. They've even videotaped me at the school and they said they still can't get it, so it's all in the kneading," she said, adding that too much kneading makes the bannock hard and dense.

While this week Cacho-Wolfe is making bannock primarily to be served with stew to those at the World Indigenous Nations Games, she's branched out to all different kinds.

"I do bannock pizzas, bannock dogs, elephant ears, bannock every which way you can think of; fried or in the oven," she said.

The competition has become a marathon bannock-making session for Cacho-Wolfe.

At her current pace of 300 loaves a day, she's on course to produce about 2,400 servings of bannock by the end of the games which close on July 9.

"It's an honour making my bannock to share with people from around the world," said.