Re: British bread rolls - taxonomy

On 28/08/2021 17:56, Graham wrote:
> On 2021-08-28 7:20 a.m., Peter Flynn wrote:
>> [...] round, domed, basically all crust and hollow inside? looking
>> nice but a tasteless swindle of an empty roll.
>>
> I don't know! I hated them too. The "dough buns" that the 2 bakeries in
> my home village made were essentially small baps. The crusts were soft.
> The bakers would never have got away with those hollow monstrosities!

They were definitely at the bottom end of the baking industry spectrum.
I have no idea what people would buy them for.

The village in East Anglia I spent most time in was too small to have
anything except a village stores, and they just took a small number of
loaves from a travelling bread van that came in from Bungay or Beccles.
Most people baked their own at home there, I suspect.

> I remember buying soda bread rolls when I was doing field work in Cork
> Harbour and other places along the south coast including Hook Head.

Not common these days: the mass-market rolls are plain white and
factory-produced. But in some stores you can get hand-made bread, and
it's growing slowly. ABC (Alternative Bread Company) in Cork market
hived off their production to a commercial baker some years ago when it
got too big an operation to be done at home, and the quality suffered
and hasn't recovered. Still pretty good, but not what it was. Declan
Ryan (of Arbutus fame) still make and sells his bread, though, which is
amazing.

Peter