a heavy metal plate heated over the fire (or by gas or electricity) and used for cooking small items of food. In Scotland, this is known as a ‘girdle’. A heavy frying pan can be used instead. Foods cooked this way include various griddle breads, bannocks, oatcakes, pancakes, and scones. For all its apparent simplicity, in skilled hands the griddle (or girdle) can be used to produce an enormous range of delicacies. Important points are that the method is successful with flour derived from grains other than wheat (barley, oats, and buckwheat; potatoes can also be used); leavening is not always necessary for mixtures used on griddles; and the method requires little or no fat to grease the surface—Marian McNeill (1929) observed that ‘the girdle is floured for dough and greased for batter’. An improvised cover also extends the possibilities for baking on a griddle.
The idea probably grew from the use of flat stones heated beside the fire: versions of this survived in places, such as the ‘bakstone’, used in the English Midlands and Yorkshire for making oatcakes, and the ‘planc’ of S. Wales; by the 20th century, metal plates, similar to griddles but fixed in place, had usually replaced the original stones. The portable metal griddle developed as a handy item of cooking equipment, known by the Middle Ages, and possibly before. It is a device which was vital in houses without an oven, where, suspended over the fire, it formed the main means of baking flour products, and was found useful in larger ones when the oven was cold. It was too useful an idea to discard, and survived in areas where grains other than wheat were important, where poverty prevented the addition of a range or oven to houses, and because people liked the products from it. It may simply be coincidence that, in the British Isles, these were also areas of strong Celtic influence, or there may have been cultural factors involved.
The 20th-century strongholds of griddle baking in Britain are S. Wales and Scotland. In the former, many teatime specialities, including jam-filled pasties, are still baked on it at home. Thick Welsh pancakes (see drop scone) are made on it and so are the smaller items known as Welsh cakes (whose Welsh name, pice ar y maen, literally means ‘cakes on the stone’). These are typically small and round, fairly thin (1 cm/0.4″), biscuity on the outside and moist inside, enlivened with currants and spices; there are many variations but all Welsh authors seem to agree that these delicacies may be eaten hot or cold, with a sprinkling of sugar, or buttered. In Scotland, numerous types of scones and bannocks are baked on the girdle, also for teatime. In England, griddles are still used for making oatcakes in the W. Midlands, and the industrial baking of pikelets, muffins, and crumpets is based on the same principle. In Ireland, griddle baking is used for soda breads and potato breads. The buckwheat pancakes and galettes of Brittany, and the blinis of E. Europe, can also be regarded as forms of griddle bread.
In the Americas, corn breads, such as tortillas, and cassava breads are cooked this way. Chapatis and numerous other breads of Asia are also cooked on a hot metal sheet which is called a tawa (in Turkey sac).
Sometimes items such as bacon, steak, or eggs are cooked on a metal hotplate, and are also said to be ‘griddled’.
Laura Mason has written about several aspects of British food in books including Sugar Plums and Sherbet (1998), Farmhouse Cookery (2005), and Traditional Foods of Britain (1999), which she co-authored with Catherine Brown.
Brown, Catherine (1990), Broths to Bannocks, London: John Murray.
McNeill, F. Marian (1929), The Scots Kitchen, Glasgow: Blackie.
Tibbott, S. Minwel (1976), Welsh Fare, St Fagan's: Welsh Folk Museum.
