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Britain and Ireland · Volume 33, The Bakestone, the Broth and the Salt Marsh

Bara Ceirch

North Wales (Bala and Meirionnydd)

Bara ceirch, Welsh oatcakes from the bakestone: several thin, pale golden round oatcakes stacked unevenly on a dark iron bakestone, their surfaces faintly speckled and cracked at the edges.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time
Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
Researched
No outside sources linked
Reviewed
Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked
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North Wales oatcakes, in two genuinely different regional methods: fat-enriched from Bala, lean from Meirionnydd.

As tradition built it

Bala (fat-enriched) and Meirionnydd (lean) methods.

Ingredients

Bala method

Meirionnydd method

Method

  1. Bala method: dissolve half a teaspoon of melted pork fat in a cup of lukewarm water, then work in roughly three handfuls of oatmeal flour by hand to a soft dough.
  2. Shape into rounds and flatten with a rolling pin to the size of a dinner plate, rotating the dough a quarter turn at a time and pressing the edges with the fingertips to stop them cracking as they thin.
  3. Griddle on a hot bakestone until dry and lightly coloured on both sides.
  4. The Meirionnydd version drops the fat entirely, water and oatmeal alone, a leaner, harder oatcake historically ground further into a coarse meal called siot and eaten soaked in buttermilk rather than fresh.

Notes

Thinness was the mark of a skilled baker in both traditions.

What a modern chef changes

Freshly milled oats on a Big Green Egg bakestone, finished two ways

Rung 1

Method

  1. Mill the oat groats to order in a dedicated spice grinder rather than buying pre-ground oatmeal, for a finer, fresher flour than either traditional method had access to.
  2. Cook the Bala dough on a Big Green Egg fitted with a flat plancha plate, run properly hot and dry, for a more even, more genuinely bakestone-like heat than a domestic hob griddle gives.
  3. Dehydrate a portion of the finished oatcakes at low heat until fully crisp and shelf-stable, closer to the Meirionnydd hard oatcake's original keeping purpose than the softer modern version.
  4. Serve both textures, fresh-griddled and dehydrator-crisp, alongside each other.
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