Making Soft Oatcakes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 106, 4 July 1941, Page 46

Making Soft Oatcakes

Dear Aunt Daisy, I read with much interest the appeal from "Interested Listener’ for recipes for making "soft oatcakes." I have vivid recollections of helping to make them in my boyhood days-(you see a man is writing again!)--but I am sorry to say I cannot give the recipe as then used. However, I know that the ingredients, after mixing thinly, with yeast added, were allowed to "work" before baking on the backspridle (or girdle); and it was always a source of admiration to me to see them successfully turned over with the deft twist necessary to avoid disaster. If the cakes were made regularly once a week, a little of the leaven was left in the crock to leaven the next batch, yeast or rising being unnecessary in that case. After baking a week’s supply, they were wrapped in a cloth and kept soft. I don’t remember drying being resorted to. With bacon and ripe cheese cooked in a Dutch Oven, they made a substantial and enjoyable meal, I remember that the vulgar term for them was "Toerag," and this same "Toerag" with cheese made many a meal for the working man, In 1915 these cakes were still being sold as your correspondent writes, and it was my delight to enjoy them again after thirty years’ absence. I was under the impression that a recipe had been brought back then, and if it can be found

I will certainly let you have it. I shall be interested to know if "Interested Listener" has made a success of your Staffordshire Recipe. It was never my good fortune as a boy to eat them with honey, but I would like to try it now, sadings I am no longer young.

"Staff ordshire Man 92

How very interesting. We would all be glad to have some more letters about oatcakes,