Oatcakes and Crowdie

On the coal-less Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, ovens are a rarity. ‘Bread’ is baked on a girdle over the gentle heat of a peat fire by all nineteenth-century crofters. Not a soft yeasty loaf, but a hard oatmeal ‘cake’ that these Gaelic speakers call a ‘bonnach’ (bannock) and non-Gaelic Scotland calls an ‘oatcake’.

This ‘cake’ refers back to the old meaning – a ‘cake of bread’ which is thin, flat, round and usually baked hard – as in something ‘caked’ hard, such as a cake of soap.

Their Hebridean ‘bonnach’ is much thicker and heavier than the Lowland version and they often use it as travelling food. It is easy to carry and is eaten with butter and cheese. Not a hard-pressed, mature cheese as found in the Lowlands, but the soft, fresh, crofter's crowdie.