Staffordshire oatcakes are a type of pancake made from oatmeal, flour and yeast, and cooked on a griddle. They should not to be confused with Scottish oatcakes (which are like a biscuit). They're so important in the Potteries that the Stoke City Football Club fanzine is called "The Oatcake"!According to the BBC they're also called a 'Tunstall tortilla', a 'potteries poppadom', and a 'clay suzette'! My local radio station, BBC Radio Stoke even has an Oatcake Message Board where you can share recipes and comments on this "produce from the gods"!
People from the Potteries who've emigrated obviously suffer cravings for oatcakes, in fact one Longton based bakehouse sells oatcake mixes through an on-line store to Potters all over the world.
Quite a few supermarkets (in the North West at least) now sell oatcakes, but you've not really had an oatcake until you've been to a proper oatcake shop and had one freshly made and served hot filled with cheese/onion/tomato/bacon/sausage/egg.
The Stoke based newspaper, The Sentinel, has produced a campaign to save the last remaining Hole in the Wall oatcake shop. There's even a video on You Tube.
I plan to visit every oatcake shop in the Potteries and have produced a map of where I think they all are:
Map of Oatcake Shops
Please let me know if I've missed any out, or if any shops on the map are no longer trading.
Oatcake Websites
http://www.nsoatcakes.co.uk
http://www.oatcakes.org
http://www.poveysoatcakes.com
http://www.staffordshireoatcakes.com
http://www.theoatcakeguide.co.uk
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