Cakes, Sweetened Breads and Baking

Although there are not many famous breads in Britain, the number of traditional enriched breads, cakes and biscuits is immense. Why this should be so, I’m not quite sure, but it could have something to do, once again, with our national sweet tooth. In fact it’s said we liked sweet things so much that we had to invent an extra meal at which to enjoy them – what we call afternoon tea.

The first breads would have been hard and flat, made from the local ground grain, and baked on hot flat hearthstones by the fire. The flat metal griddle or girdle, which is suspended over the fire, is an example of this method. The word is thought to come from the name for hot stones in the Celtic language, greadeal, and the use of the implement is common to all the Celtic countries, from northern France to Ireland and Scotland. Today, the northern bannock or oatcake is the nearest equivalent to that earliest type of bread.