Bread and Bappery

Appears in

Published 2016

About

Bappery is a wonderful word coined by the actress Siobhan Redmond when she described to me what her aunts used to love making when she was growing up in Glasgow; to her it meant scones, cakes and teabreads, all the home-baking that we Scots were brought up on. But bappery is such an iconic term, I like to use it to describe all yeasted Scottish baking, whether it is for a butterie, a Selkirk bannock or of course a bap.

Over the centuries the type of breads that have been enjoyed in Scotland has varied enormously, from medieval trencher breads and sixteenth century wheaten loaves to the healthy twentieth century Doris Grant loaf and of course a myriad of regional oatmeal or barley meal bread in between. In most rural homes, however, there would have been no oven and so girdle breads and scones were more traditional.