Home Food Legends Staffordshire Oatcakes

Staffordshire Oatcakes

Oats were brought to this country by the Romans and proved a tough enough crop to thrive in the bleaker parts of Britain. Hence their predominance in Scots cookery, and in the traditional cookery of the North of England and the Midlands – oats were for centuries more common than wheat in the Pennine counties, and other versions of the oatcake were once common in Lancashire and Derbyshire.

For miners and potters alike the oatcake was a useful standby, eaten hot at breakfast and cold as part of the midday ‘snappin’ Oats are a great source of slow-release energy, and the oatcakes were appreciated by those who had long days of physical labour to get through.

These days the Staffordshire oatcake is still much loved, greatly missed by Potter exiles. There remain many oatcake makers in and around Stoke-on-Trent, though sadly the hole-in-the-wall shops are fading into history now. On the other hand, Asda, Booths and various other supermarkets are stocking them today.

The oatcakes are not difficult to make at home, and freeze very well for reheating on a flat griddle, so it is worthwhile batch cooking them. It’s a pity more hotels don’t offer the Staffordshire breakfast as an alternative to the full English: oatcakes with bacon and eggs.

The Staffordshire Oatcake is a cross between a flatbread and a pancake, cooked on a griddle or a bakestone, one side ending up smooth, the other with a pin-holed surface. Like so many regional foods there is no definitive recipe for the oatcake, but a rough version to make about 15 is:

8oz fine oatmeal
8 oz white bread flour
Either a tablespoon of dried milk powder, or a bit more of melted bacon fat or even lard
2 teaspoons of dried yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar

Mix all the above and incorporate a bit less than a pint of lukewarm water – until a stiff pancake batter has been formed. Leave covered for at least 30 minutes and up to 90. When about to cook add more water to get a looser batter consistency, add a half-teaspoon of salt, or up to a spoonful if you prefer. Don’t add the salt until about to cook, or the yeast will struggle. Cook, aiming for about twice the thickness of a normal pancake, on an oiled bakestone or frying pan, turning so both sides are done.

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