Staffordshire oatcakes

"If you come from Stoke-on-Trent you won't need to be told what Oatcakes are." Steve Maskery - Instructables

Whilst I am not from Staffordshire, I did spend four years, just outside Stoke-on-Trent, home of the Staffordshire Oatcake, and I'm ashamed to say that until now I had never heard of them.

How I come to be doing this post is thanks to a friend who gave me a recipe, thinking it might be interesting for me. I'm also ashamed to say she gave it to me some time ago - maybe a year ago - and it has been sitting on my desktop all this time waiting for me to look at it. And just to show how ignorant I am I must admit that I thought they were a sort of oat biscuit. But no - as you can see they are a sort of pancake.

"North Staffordshire Oatcakes are not cakes. An oatcake is a cross between a pancake, because it is cooked flat on a griddle or a frying pan, a crumpet, because the batter is allowed to ferment, and porridge, because it contains oats." Steve Maskery - Instructables

So no it is not at all like a Scottish oatcake which is a kind of biscuit, though it is similar to ones made in Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Cheshire. But there are differences and this is a very, very local thing - really just to Stoke-on-Trent. They used to be sold from people's homes through their windows and the last of these establishments closed down as recently as 2012.

In Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery she quotes a rather wonderful passage about it - slight apologies for quoting it in full here. It was written by Philip Oakes in The Sunday Times in 1974.

"The shop stood half-way down the hill, the bottom of its bow window level with my eyes. It was open for business at 7.30 but always I got there half an hour early to watch the oatcakes being made. Looming above me, his belly bulging in a striped apron, the oatcake man would test the heat of his bakestone - a black iron plate which sent the thermals shimmering to the ceiling - and from a tall white jug he would put out 12 liquid pats of oatmeal which spat and bubbled on the metal.

There was an instant, mouth-watering smell of toasted oatmeal as the mixture crisped at the edges. One by one, the oatcakes would be flipped over, then with both sides done they would be stacked in a tender, tottering pile beside the bake stone. I would buy 12 and bear them home, clasped to my chest like a hot and fragrant poultice.

When I left the Potteries oatcakes disappeared from my life and the loss was insupportable. I searched everywhere but soon found that they were an intensely local delicacy, unheard of north of Leek, unimagined south of Banbury. Most shops think of oatcake as an oatmeal biscuit. But the oatcakes of my childhood were soft oatmeal pancakes, delicious with butter and honey, delectable with bacon and eggs."

Mind you overall the wisdom seems to be that you don't eat sweet things with them. Really it has to be cheese or bacon, maybe an egg - preferably fried.

"When we were kids, Sunday breakfast was always bacon, egg and oatcake. It's still a favourite. But they are delicious plain buttered, or grilled with cheese like cheese-on-toast. Bacon and cheese is good, or rolled round a good sausage like a hot dog." Steve Maskery - Instructables

They're really like any other kind of wrap in the way that you can use them, it seems to me, which might account for them creeping back into the shops. I notice that Sainsbury's at least seems to have them - which probably means the other majors do too. So maybe the tide is turning. I'm sure you won't find them here though. The English are despised for all sorts of reasons, some of them deserved, and their food is probably one of them - not quite deserved. It's certainly not fashionable.

"You can put whatever you like in your oatcakes, but a filling of bacon and cheese is not only traditional but forms one of those rare, simple ingredient combinations that border the sublime." Felicity Cloake

Incidentally if you want to know just about everything else about Staffordshire oatcakes read Felicity Cloake In her 'How to Make the Perfect Staffordshire Oatcake' article, Felicity Cloake quotes Rose Prince as saying: “there is something scandalous about supermarket bakery aisles groaning with pitta bread, tortilla wraps and naan but without a single traditional oatcake in sight”. And probably elsewhere in the supermarket other traditional foods are missing too.

Opinion also seems to be divided on whether they are a nineteenth century thing or much older than that. I think I would go for the much older. After all it's one of those basic foods isn't it? Oats are cheaper than wheat (well they were) and so much more likely to be used by the poor. And since they were cooked on a griddle you also didn't need an oven.

But to return briefly to my four years just outside Stoke-on-Trent and the Potteries. Because the subject made me realise how ignorant I was of the culture of the town beside which I lived for so long.

Why was I there? Well I was at university - the University of Keele to be specific. Here it is from the air.

At the head of that glorious swathe of green you can just see the stately home - Keele Hall - which was at the heart of the campus. All those woods at the bottom and the green on the left are part of the university grounds. It was beautiful, on a hill and therefore physically cut off from the Potteries - the five towns of Arnold Bennett's books.

The contrast couldn't be greater could it? We used to venture there very occasionally on the bus - not being able to understand the accent/dialect of the locals who travelled with us. We shopped there sometimes, had haircuts, occasionally went to the cinema or visited a pub. I think there was even a theatre in the round that was intermittently favoured with our patronage. The Potteries - the Pots as we called them was an ugly place. So ugly in fact that it was almost beautiful - as I think the photograph above shows. Those conical buildings are the kilns for the pottery which is made there - still. All the prestigious brands began there - Wedgewood, Royal Doulton et al. It has a proud and interesting history but even within that sphere it is often forgotten in favour of the larger Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle.

They were perhaps the most memorable and life-changing years of my life. My heart was broken and repaired a few times, I learnt to speak up for myself. By the time I left I think I was even just beginning to get the knack of what study and learning was all about and how one should do more than just read and spit it all out again. Although, sadly, I see that, to a certain extent, that is exactly what I am doing here - reading other, better writers than I, on a particular subject and then condensing it down to a brief summary. Oh and the other thing, of course, I got from my years there, was a husband and some lifelong friends - and a degree. It was a privileged time. But in all that time I did not taste a Staffordshire oatcake. I did not even know they existed. They certainly weren't sold in our Union shop or served up for our breakfasts. How sad.

As to how to make them. As I said, Felicity Cloake works her way through the variations which seem to be chiefly centred on what kind of flour - oatmeal, white or wholemeal, together or mixed, and liquid - water, milk or both. But I will also give you Anthea's recipe as this is what started me off on this little discovery and trip down memory lane.

ANTHEA'S STAFFORDSHIRE OAT CAKES

½ lb of Fine oatmeal

½ lb Plain white flour

½ oz of Fresh Yeast

1 tsp of Salt (fine ground)

1 tsp of Sugar

¾ pint of warm milk

¾ pint of warm water

Sieve flour and oatmeal into a warm basin. Add salt and stir.

Dissolve yeast in a little of the warm liquid, add sugar and set aside in a warm place to rise (I suspect the airing cupboard for us Brits to know and Aussies to wonder about?? – hot pavement courtyard outside?).

When frothy, add the dry ingredients and the remainder of the milk and water mixture to make a smooth batter. Mix well, cover with a cloth and place in a warm place for an hour.

Grease a griddle or thick based frying pan and cook as if this was a pancake batter. Usually the first goes into the bin.

Once cooked, place to one side and when a quantity are ready, return each to the pan and add cheese and cooked bacon to create an Oatmeal omelette shape.

For you non-Brits an airing cupboard is a cupboard in which you 'air' or finish drying, your washing - it usually has the house's water heater in it and is therefore warm. And as for putting the first one in the bin - this seems to be a common theme for all the recipes I found. And yes you can use dried yeast if you can't get fresh.

"Staffordshire Oatcakes are, quite possibly, the best regional speciality you’ve never heard of." Time to Cook Online