You’re barmy if you call a bread bun a teacake

10:54am Monday 17th March 2008

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For a moment I thought I was going mad. "What's a bread bun?" asked one of my colleagues, who was joined by another bread bun sceptic.

"I've never heard of bread buns," he said, with a perplexed look on his face.

Fearing my own sanity, I flew to the internet and was reassured by many an image of bread buns, both round and crispy and soft and doughy.

The description backed up my belief that a 'bun' is a 'sweet or plain small bread or round roll'.

North Yorkshire born and bred, I have long been flummoxed by Lancashire bread terminology.

My friends here insist on calling a bread bun a teacake - how ridiculous is that?

I've been raised in the understanding that a tea cake is a doughy thing rather like a hot cross bun, with mixed currants and sultanas in it.

In Lancashire, this is known as a currant tea cake. Confused?

It threw me when I first began work in Lancashire and was asked whether I wanted a tuna mayonnaise teacake.

'How revolting', I remember thinking, imagining the currants mixed with the tuna.

Discussing the subject at work - well it was mid-afternoon and we'd long finished with last night's TV and which celebrities we hate - we quickly concluded that these small, round bits of bread present something of a language barrier.

Some people call bread buns barm cakes - in fact, before I checked I spelled it as a very tropical-sounding 'balm' cakes.

These appear to be another, identical, version of bread buns, or teacakes, call them what you will.

"What about muffins?" a colleague piped up.

True, some people call bread buns by this name, and lo and behold, there are images on muffin' websites of foodstuffs bearing a remarkable resemblance to bread buns/teacakes.

As if that wasn't enough to tip a confused mind over the edge, next came mention of 'oven bottoms'.

I once again hit Google, to find 'oven bottom muffins' masquerading as bread buns. It's a minefield.

And bap - I had heard of baps, but not really known what they were. They look remarkably like bread buns to me.

Even the straightforward 'bread roll' languishes in a grey area, with half my colleagues, and my husband, thinking it a firm round soup roll, and the other half a long thin, hot-dog, shaped bun, although I shouldn't be using the word 'bun' in this context at all.

It will only add confusion. For the record, both shapes are pictured on Google.

My mum buys Sally Lunns, also a bread bun, only bigger.

What I'd really like is a job in a bakery on the border of Lancashire and North Yorkshire.

What a challenge that would be. I'd be craving Prozac within the first hour.

My colleagues are not easy to convince as to the existence of bread buns.

I realise I'm going to have to gather evidence.

I may get support from South Yorkshire which seems to use the term to describe the aforementioned food.

Only I'm not sure I feel comfortable approaching what seems to be a strange bunch of southerners.

In one area of the county they have annual rituals, throwing 'bread buns' off a local church tower.

At least I think they're bread buns - they may be tea-cakes.