Bush bread

Bush bread

Aboriginal millstone – vital in making flour or pastes for bread. Some Aboriginal groups call it "mother and child"
Alternative names	Seedcakes
Type	Bread
Place of origin	Australia
Main ingredients	Flour (from various seeds), water

Bush bread, or seedcakes, refers to the bread made by Australian Aboriginals for many thousands of years, by crushing seeds into a dough, after which it is baked. The bread was high in protein and carbohydrate, and helped form part of a balanced traditional diet.

With the arrival of Europeans and pre-milled white flour, this bread-making process all but disappeared (although women were still recorded to be making seedcakes in Central Australia in the 1970s). The tradition of cooking bread in hot coals continues today.

Bread-making was a woman's task. It was generally carried out by several women at once, due to its labour-intensive nature. It involved collecting seasonal grains, legumes, roots or nuts, and preparing these into flour and then dough, or directly into a dough.

Seeds varied depending on the time of year and the area in Australia that the people lived. In Central Australia, native millet (Panicum decompositum; Panicum australianse) and spinifex (Triodia) were commonly used. Wattleseed could also be used in the flour mix.

Women harvested the fully ripe, dry seeds of the plant by beating the grass (or pod-laden trees in the case of wattleseed) with sticks to dislodge the seeds. Some species were eaten at the green stage and, when ground, would produce a juice at the side of the millstone, which was drunk directly.

Some seeds (such as the seed of acacia) need to be heated, hulled and then ground dry, while others (such as those of grasses) can be ground with water.

In the Kimberley region of Western Australia, women observed that, after the dry season, many seeds would be gathered around the opening of harvester ants' nests. The ants had effectively collected and husked the seed for them, and they were able to collect this seed, making their job a lot easier. After allowing the grain to dry, they could begin to prepare the flour.