The Staffordshire oatcake is a regional delicacy which is little known outside North Staffordshire and pockets of Derbyshire, but has long been a favourite of the discerning inhabitants of these areas.
As far back as 1776, James Boswell recorded his impression of this different kind of oatcake, when he accompanied Dr. Johnson on a visit to Lichfield. They stayed at the Three Crowns: "a good old fashioned" inn, which was "the very next house to that in which Johnson was born and brought up". It was there that Boswell first tasted ale made from oats, and also the Staffordshire oatcake?so different from his native Scottish variety, as he duly reported: "oat cakes not hard as in Scotland, but soft like a Yorkshire cake, were served with breakfast".
Boswell went on to make a joking allusion to Johnson's entry on oats in the famous dictionary. (Johnson had defined oats as "a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people".) Boswell therefore noted that: "It was pleasant to me to find that `Oats; the food of horses; were so much used as the food of the people in Dr. Johnsons's own town."'
Over a century and a half after Boswell's encounter with the Staffordshire oatcake, Philip Oakes was explaining to his schoolmates in Wolverhampton that oatcakes, one of his favourite foods, were "not biscuits . . . but soft oatmeal pancakes, delicious with butter and honey, delectable with bacon and eggs. "
Elizabeth David, in her definitive book, English Bread and Yeast Cookery, devotes a chapter to "Yeast Leavened Pancakes and Oatcakes". As she explains: "In the past, one of the great points about leavened pancakes and all the tribe of griddle cakes was that they provided a means of using meals and flours such as barley, buckwheat, oatmeal, which were not suitable for bread proper".
The recipes included in Elizabeth David's chapter come from a number of counties and regions of Britain, but the Staffordshire oatcake is the only one which is still alive and flourishing. Somehow, it made the transition from a home?produced rural staple (cooked on a bakestone, with the fire underneath) to an urban product, commercially produced, and still regularly consumed in much of North Staffordshire. Over the years, oatcakes have decreased in thickness and diameter (from 16 inches to about 8 inches); but otherwise they have remained unchanged?the basic ingredients are still fine oatmeal, wheat flour, yeast and water.... to be continued
1. James Boswell,
Life of Johnson, (entry for 23 March 1776).
2. Philip Oakes, From Middle England, p. 95, Penguin Books, 1983.
3. Elizabeth David, English Bread and Yeast Cookery, p. 407, Allen Lane, 1977.