Wednesday 12 August 2015

Breadcakes Galore

Having soup for your tea? Then you'll be wanting a small round ball of dough, proofed and baked to accompany it, but what do you call those little individual loaves? It appears people of the British Isles don't know either. I must warn you before you consult the map below, if you find yourself in a café in Yorkshire and you ask for a tea-cake then you'll be presented with something resembling a hot cross bun with currants in it, toasted and dripping in butter, quite nice but you wouldn't want to dip it in your soup.


I can't wait to pop in to my local bakery to ask for 'half a dozen butteries, love' just to see the look on the sale assistant's face.


They must be a giddy lot in Norwich to call them Viennas.



We call them Breadcakes oop North and I think the rest of Britain should follow suit.

15 comments:

  1. Oh dear. Next time I'm in a UK bakery, I'll just point and ask for "one of those, please."

    PS: I would call it a roll. Some Pimento Cheese would be nice on it.

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    1. "one of those, please." Last of the big spenders.

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  2. Baps all the way. I had many a bacon bap as a child.
    Always a pleasure to go in to the local bakery and ask for some big baps. I just the sound of the word. Bap. Bap, bap, bap, bap.x

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  3. Here in the States we call them hard rolls. Isn't that fun?

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  4. As you already have mentioned, Brötchen here ; from medieval brôtlin, small single piece of bread.
    The UK seems to be full of morning rolls, hard rolls in the US resp.

    Do you also dip these rolls into coffee or cacao - or would that lead to instant social death by stares ? Butterbrötchen with salt dipped in hot sweet cocoa is worth it anyway !

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    1. I can imagine posh people calling them morning rolls, the same people who pronounce breakfast as 'Brake Fast'

      I'm aware of French people dipping bread into their coffee but unaware that filthy habit had spread to Germany. You wouldn't be a social outcast, just looked upon as a bit weird. My maid of all work Carmen likes to dip bourbon creams in her tea, I like to mentally strike her on the back of her head every time she dunks.

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  5. P.S. I forgot : Other names are Semmel or Wecken / Weckla (in Franconian dialect) - these are names for it in Southern Germany and Austria, while those strange Hamburgians also speak of "Rundstücke", what I find very annoying.
    Basically "Brötchen" is understood everywhere in German speaking areas and sufficient geographically innocuous.

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    1. Same here, the English equivalent of Brötchen would be "bread rolls" and yet we have all these daft bloody names for them.

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  6. I am dull. I call them bread rolls. And a teacake definitely contains fruit.
    But, I'm very fond of the the soft floury baps and I have no idea what is going on in Norfolk.
    Sx

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    1. You're safe with bread rolls. I'm off to Blackpool tomorrow, so I'll have to get used to calling them barms (short for barmy).

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    2. I have no idea what's going on in Norfolk, either - and I bloody live here! I've never heard a roll being called a vienna? How peculiar. It must be something those inbreds (no pun intended) say near Kings Lynn.

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  7. Replies
    1. I've just googled Lardy cake and it contains fruit and an Oggie is a Cornish pastie.

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