Stottie Cake Week

A photograph and a few words (and a recipe) ...

"Where's me scran, I'm clamming" - English translation from the Geordie: “Where is my food? I'm ravenous”

This week is the first National Stottie Cake Week in the UK, although I expect that the celebration will be more in the northeast of England, the home of the iconic Stottie (or Stotty), rather than nationwide.

Various events and activities are taking place in and around Newcastle, and Scotty the Stottie mascot is out and about raising money for the Children's Heart Unit Fund as well as other children's charity projects. Merchandise is also for sale; the proceeds going to children's charities.

The initiative for the event comes from the Big River Bakery, a small-batch bakery found in the heart of Newcastle specialising in slow ferment, handmade bread and baked goods made with locally sourced ingredients. But more than just being a bakery, the owners also see the business as a social enterprise and part of the fabric of the northeast, contributing to the local community's well-being in several ways. It was one of the bakery’s most sought-after products that inspired Stottie Cake Week (and I can testify that their stotties are up there with the best).

But you might ask (especially if you are outside the northeast of England) what is a Stottie cake?

First, it's not a cake but a distinctive type of bread, which has become synonymous with Northeast England, with its springy texture being its defining feature. A round, flat, and dense bread around 30cm in diameter and 4 to 5 cm thick. These days, I also see smaller diameter stotties of around 5 cm. When I was young, people would call them 'fadges', not stotties.

While its exact origins are a subject of friendly debate. Just like the Cornish pasty has a thick crust for holding with dirty hands of what were the counties’ tin miners and farm labourers, and the original Pizza Fritta had a crust that fulfilled the same role for agricultural workers around Naples, the Stottie comes from a humble background. We can trace its history back to the 19th-century working-class communities of Northeast England. Miners, shipbuilders, etc., needed a hearty and portable meal that could withstand their demanding workdays. Thus, the Stottie was born – a bread easily packed with fillings and eaten on the go. Traditionally made with scraps of leftover dough as a cheap and easy bread to bake in the coal-fired ovens that warmed the kitchens of the region's terrace houses.

Today, the making of stotties is still with simple ingredients of flour, water, yeast, sugar, pepper and salt, creating a dough that's heavily kneaded and then left to rise before being shaped into thick rounds. The bread is then baked as low down in the oven as possible. The lower in the oven the Stottie sits, the longer it will take to cook, allowing the ingredients to bind and give it that signature chewy, stretchy texture. It's said that the name Stottie comes from the Geordie word 'stot', meaning to bounce, reflecting the bread's unique texture (although there is a counter theory that the name comes from bakers 'bouncing' the bread onto the floor of the oven)

The classic serving is with ham and pease pudding (aka Geordie caviar - made with yellow split peas), the marriage of two of the North East's finest contributions to mankind, along with the first commercial locomotive and incandescent lightbulb. You can and should serve stottie alongside a hearty soup, such is the bread's sponge-like quality and extremely high saturation limits. But honestly, any filling works well in a Stottie, and those who taste it for the first time seem to become instant fans. However, as with la baguette, something to remember is that Stotties can go stale very quickly.

My eldest son is definitely a fan, and he still talks with much nostalgia about the Stottie chicken sandwiches his nanny (my mother) used to make. They were not the most health-conscious, with a thick layer of butter and copious amounts of salt and pepper and packed with roast chicken. You could feel the arteries hardening with every delicious bite.

On his recent visit, we munched through a couple of stotties (they work exceptionally well with a filling of frankfurters and onions). And we had to pop to my favourite deli (they are an outlet for the Big River Bakery), Hunters in Newcastle’s Grainger market, on the morning of his departure to buy a couple for him to take home with him.

While Stottie is very much part of the cuisine of northeast England, I once found it on sale in a small bakery in, of all places, Luton. However, they sold it as 'Geordie Bread' - I guess there might have been a small enclave of migrant northeasterners living there who were missing the taste of home. As I recall, the Stottie was surprisingly good.

One of the loveliest aromas from my school days was that of Stottie baked fresh from the 'range’, the large black-leaded open fire and associated ovens that dominated one wall of the kitchen of my parents' small, terraced house. The range had character but was not the easiest thing on and in which to cook - no temperature setting, etc. People cooked things on it by eye and feel. My father and brother removed it in the early 1960s, and cooking was then via an easier-to-use but far more mundane gas oven. The range went for scrap, yet today, people of a certain income would spend a fortune for such an installation. More to look at as a 'feature' than to cook with, I suspect.

Baking days in our and my grandparents’ house (they lived just along the same street) were Tuesdays and Fridays. My mother and grandmother both made a variety of stotties and pan loaves. Saturday was my mother’s pie-making day, and she would make enough for us and my grandparents. My grandmother was the cake maker usually, on a Saturday. She would bake for both her and my grandad and for us. This division of labour was driven by the temperature of my mother's and grandmother's hands. I don't know if it's true - maybe a baker reading this can confirm, but my mother felt she had cool hands - better for making pastry. My grandmother had warm hands better for bread. My mother always thought my grandmother’s bread tasted better. I thought both were wonderful. Especially fresh from the oven and slathered with butter that melted on touching the soft interior. And boy, my grandmother’s cakes still live in my memory. A Sunday tea-time treat if ever there was one.

Neither my mother nor grandmother would have considered buying bread, pies (sweet or savoury) or cakes. All were homemade, and of course, that's true of pastry. Whether shortcrust, puff or rough puff, there was no convenient pastry block to buy sixty years ago. The one exception on bread was at Christmas when my mother would fall back on a 'shop-bought' loaf as she was too busy to bake. My mother would always apologise to a visitor if she offered a sandwich made with such a loaf.

So, if you visit the northeast of England, seek out some Stottie - it's not fine dining, but it will help insulate you against the east wind off the North Sea, and if there are any bakers out there - here's a recipe to try - this will make two Stotties.

INGREDIENTS

1 ½ lbs strong white bread flour (680g)

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon sugar

½ ounce (15g) fresh yeast (you can also use quick action dried yeast - 1 x 7g sachet)

White pepper, about ¼ of a teaspoon

¾ pint (450mls) tepid water

INSTRUCTIONS

If using fresh yeast, crumble it into a jug and then mix in the white pepper, sugar, and a little tepid water. Place it somewhere warm for 10 to 15 minutes so it can start to 'work'. It is ready to use when it becomes frothy.

Put the bread flour and salt into a large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre; pour in the yeast mixture and the remaining water. If using dried yeast, just sprinkle the yeast into the flour at this stage, with the sugar and white pepper and add the water as before.

Mix and then knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic. Don't be shy when kneading; this bread must be well-kneaded for at least ten minutes.

Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and set it to one side, somewhere warm, to allow the dough to rise. This will take about an hour, and the dough should have doubled before you can use it.

Pre-heat oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Butter or grease some large baking sheets.

Put the dough onto a floured board and divide it into two equal pieces; roll it out to make two large flat discs, about 1" (2.5cm) thick and then stick the end of a rolling pin in the middle of the dough to make an indentation. You can also prick the top of the bread with a fork too.

Place the Stottie Cakes onto the prepared baking sheets and bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes before turning the oven off and leaving them in there for up to half an hour to continue to bake.