Our daily bread

By Richard Watson.

The title conjures up a picture of a wheaten loaf, crusty and wholesome, the staff of life! But for whom? And where, historically? Certainly, the historical textbooks of the writer's school days led one to believe that all rural communities operated a system which was a mirror-image of life in the south east of England, or, at the furthest, that big swathe of arable land which went across the Midlands. This was not so, however, and to examine the north-west generally and our own Fylde and Over-Wyre in particular, it soon becomes apparent that our climate would not support the successful ripening of the earlier strains of wheat every year. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, strains of wheat were developed which wheat increased in were more equable to our wet climate and popularity, and its bread being used down the social scale as it became more easily available and cheaper, as people acquired ovens.

The adventuress Celia Fiennes, who toured the kingdom during the late seventeenth century, noted in her journal when staying overnight in Garstang, that the inn had a large basket of a kind of oatcake on the dining table, it was what passed for bread in the locality she remarked. Celia Fiennes would have been nurtured on the common south eastern English fallacy, repeated regarding Scotland by the famous literary Dr. Johnson of Lichfield during the eighteen that in Scotland oats were considered food for men but in England only fit for horses.

So what was the staple component of our diet in this cattle oriented north western land of ours? Clap bread, Porridge (poddish) and Jannock, and every housewife would have her favourite way of making them as many recipes as there are for genuine Lancashire hot pot or scouse. Clap bread was normally a thin oat cake made on a griddle (pronounced girdle) over the open fire, and left to dry on a rack near to the hearth. Some people preferred to eat it soft but most dried it out to the crisp form. The Jannock, however, was a flat broad loaf usually of malted oats and not on the table every day, being reserved for high-days and holy-days; again, this loaf would have to be baked on the griddle because bread ovens, brick constructed and part of the main hearth and chimney did not manifest themselves, even in quite substantial houses until well into the eighteenth century, although they were common enough in the Midlands and below. Jannock is also a Lancashire word meaning correct, proper, upright or even enjoyable.

"Health's improver" written in 1655 by Messrs. Moufet & Bennet contains the following comment upon the subject, "Had Gallen (a physician from ancient Greece seen the Oaten Cakes of the North, the Jannocks of Lancashire, and Grues of Cheshire, he would have confessed that the Oats and Oatmeal are no only Meat for Beasts, but also for tall, fair and strong men and women".

It is perhaps gratifying that clap bread can still be bought in Garstang. Perhaps Celia Fiennes would not have approved?