Scones, buns, oatcakes and baps: the secrets to British baking, and how climate and trade make it different from north to south
- Food historian Regula Ysewijn explains how the climate affects what the British bake – flour in the north is made from oats and barley, and in the south wheat
- Trade brought the north sugar, currants, rum and sherry, used to bake things like Dundee cake, while the Cornish traded tin for saffron that they baked in cakes
Oats In the North, Wheat From the South by Regula Ysewijn
The title of the cookbook Oats in the North, Wheat from the South (2020) succinctly sums up the dividing line that the climate in Britain imposed on the crops grown there, and which in turn influenced baking across the British Isles.
Regula Ysewijn, a Belgian writer and food historian, writes in the introduction to the book, “The many bakes made with oats in the North tell the story of a rougher and wetter climate in the northern areas, where oats and barley were the most important crops because they could withstand the adverse weather. Here developed a culture for quick breads like soda bread, griddle cakes, oatcakes and scones, as well as paper-thin crispbread called Clapcake in Northern England and Scotland, which we usually associate with Scandinavia.
“The cakes of the North were usually heavily spiced, containing unrefined sugars and often rum or sherry. The large trading ports such as Dundee in Scotland and Whitehaven in the north of England traded with the Caribbean and Spain, making imports of sugar, rum, currants, sherry and other raw materials possible. The uniqueness of the Dundee cake therefore consists of these imported goods and it is not surprising that many gingerbreads, cakes and parkins also originate from these northern areas.
“Wheat is the grain ‘par excellence’ in the Centre, South and South-west because the climate is drier and the summers are longer. Saffron characterises the bakes in Cornwall. This south-west peninsula was a trading place for tin that, according to Slow Food UK, was exchanged for saffron and other goods. To meet the need for this mysteriously fragrant spice, saffron was also grown in Cornwall and in Essex around the town of Saffron Walden.”
Ysewijn, who developed an obsession for Britain as a child growing up in Antwerp, which is in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (she “learned English from reading Jane Austen’s novels”), became fascinated with British baked goods on family holidays to the country. She started baking after buying a blueberry muffin in Scotland that was so big it took her two days to eat it.
“British baking is cosiness and warmth,” she writes. “The British make time for cakes. If they could, they would drop everything each day at four o’clock for afternoon tea […] Cakes, biscuits, pies and other sweet and savoury pastries are entwined with the identity of the inhabitants of the green British Isles […] There are few peoples, not even the French, who dedicate a time of day and a whole etiquette to cakes and tea. I am not fond of dessert because I want sweet treats to be the main affair rather than the afterthought in the dessert course. There is much to say about the afternoon tea ritual and history and the importance of toast in British culture.”
Ysewijn, one of two judges on television show Bake Off Vlaanderen, the Belgian version of The Great British Bake Off, gives recipes for traditional British favourites such as Madeira cake, Victoria sandwich cake, two versions of Bath buns (18th century and 20th century), Cornish saffron buns, Eccles cakes, Tottenham cake, Scottish oatcakes, soft white baps, Cornish pasties, mince pies (with and without meat), Bakewell tart, English muffins, scones and pork pies.
