Stotties: A History of Newcastle’s Famous Bread

This post is part of the History of Food series, a revived project from 2021 that explores the origin stories of traditional dishes, the lessons they can teach us, and the people who keep the food alive. In each post, we visit a restaurant that puts their spin on a classic dish. 

Mohammed Ali, widely considered the world’s greatest boxer, shocked the entire country when he arrived in the North East for a 4-day visit to help raise money for a local boys boxing club.

How did the champion spend his time on Tyneside?

He paraded in an open-top bus, had his marriage blessed at a local mosque and, most surprisingly, feasted on the regions favourite sandwich: a ham and pease pudding stottie.

If you’re from the North East, you’re likely familiar with the round, flat bread and its dough-like texture.

But if you’re from elsewhere, you may know it as a fadge, an oven-bottom cake, hearth-bread, a scuffler, a muffin or a barm cake.

It seems every city across Britain has their own taxonomy for the chewy bread cake.

Where did these peculiar bread cakes come from?

As the world industrialised at the turn of the 19th century, so too did innovation transform the kitchen. The oven became commonplace and people began to bake more bread at home.

But baking wasn’t easy. Early ovens lacked a heat gauge. Housewives estimated oven temperatures by touching its handle. Heating up an oven also used lots of resources, so it was imperative to fully utilise “oven time”.

Hence, housewives would put a scrap piece of dough at the bottom of the oven at the start, or the end after cleaning, of a baking day. This provided a slow-baked flat bread — the stottie cake.

The cake became a common choice dfor the pitman’s sandwich: the miner’s lunch while working in the pit.

With its thick crust, the stottie (or stotty) was a great choice for a man whose hands were invariably caked in soot and dirt.

While oven technology has evolved, and the pits have long since closed, stotties can still be found on the shelves of nearly every bakery in the North East.

Stotties at the Pink Lane Bakery (and beyond)

They sit proudly on the shelves of Newcastle’s Pink Lane Bakery, alongside gastronomic sourdough breads, pizzas and European pastries.

For the most authentic stottie, look no further than Greggs, who have an outlet on neigh-on every high street in the region. And from every single one, you can get a few rolls to take home.

If you’ve found stotties (or bamcakes, oven-bottom cakes, or whatever you want to call them), and you’re wondering what to do with your stotties: take a leaf out of Ali’s book. Ham and pease pudding. You can’t go wrong.