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Put the flour in a bowl and stir in the bicarb, salt and sugar, if using. Pour in the buttermilk to make a soft dough: the mix should be too sticky to come together into a ball.
Note that different flours vary in absorbency, so if it looks too liquid or too dry, adjust with a little more flour or buttermilk as required. Liberally flour a work surface and your hands, then tip out the dough and form it into a roughly 2cm-thick round.
Flour a knife and cut the round into quarters (or into smaller triangles, if you prefer).
Put a heavy-based griddle or frying pan on a medium-low heat. Test the heat by sprinkling a little flour over it; if it browns slowly, the pan is ready; if the flour burns, you’ll need to turn down the heat. Carefully lift the bannocks on to the pan, spacing them out as far as possible, and leave them to cook for five minutes, keeping an eye on the colour of the flour underneath them and turning down the heat if necessary.
Carefully turn over the bannocks – the bases should be brown, not black – and cook on the other side for another five minutes, or until cooked through. Stand each bannok up on its edges to brown the sides.
Put on a wire rack to cool slightly, then serve with lots of good butter.