Sunderland author shows us how to make the perfect stotty at home

A favourite food on Wearside, stottys (or stottie cakes) feature heavily in Glenda Young’s successful series of books set in Ryhope including Belle of the Back Streets, The Tuppenny Child and Pearl of Pit Lane.

Now the author has come up with a novel way of making the North East bread at home during lockdown, with a recipe that also appears in Belle of the Back Streets.

Glenda said: “The reason there's a recipe for stottie cake in the book is that there's a lot of baking in all of my books and stotty especially is being made a lot by the women in my book, Belle of the Back Streets.

“My London agent and my editor at Headline didn't know what stotty was and so I thought I'd add a recipe in the book with a link to my blog where readers can see me baking it too.

“I've had readers from overseas sending me messages to say they're baking stotty in Canada.”

As well as providing baking inspiration, Glenda has been doing her bit to help her community in lockdown.

As well as donating 30 books to St Paul’s Church in Ryhope, who deliver them in food parcels to those self-isolating in the village, she’s also donated books to Sunderland and South Tyneside NHS where they were distributed on the Phoenix ward.

Glenda’s next book, The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon, is set between Ryhope and Scarborough in 1919 and is published as an ebook and audiobook on May 14 and it's out in paperback in October.

In November, The Paper Mill Girl is released in ebook, audio and hardback and inspired by Hendon paper mill in 1919. It's out in paperback in March 2021.

*Order one of Glenda’s books, with profits to NHS at glendayoungbooks.com

*For a recipe on how to make another Sunderland classic, pink slices, see here.

How to make a stotty

INGREDIENTS: Makes 1 large stottie cake

::400g strong white bread flour

::Half a teaspoon of salt

::1 teaspoon of sugar

::Half a teaspoon of ground white pepper

::1 sachet of dried yeast, 7g

::1 tablespoon of softened butter

::2 teaspoons of sunflower oil

::90ml milk

::180ml tepid water

::1. In a large bowl stir the flour, salt and pepper, sugar together.

::2. Add the yeast and give it another stir

::3. Add butter and oil and rub in with fingertips for a minute or so until everything is crumbly.

::4. Put the milk and warm water into a jug and then pour around the sides of the bowl to distribute the liquid evenly.

::5. Stir it so that the liquid combines with the dry ingredients. Turn it out to a floured board and work it all together by hand for about 5 minutes into a good dough. Don’t worry if it’s still wet and sticky.

::6. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave in a warm place for an hour.

::7. When the dough has doubled in size, turn it onto a floured board and form into a flat, round disc shape - like a frisbee!

::8..Squash it gently with a floured bread board, not too much, it needs to be roughly 2.5cm thick.

::9. Place on a greased baking tray and cover with a bonny tea-towel.

::10. Leave it in a warm place for 30 minutes.

::11. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 6 / 200 degrees C / 400 degrees F

::12. Squash it gently again with the floured bread board, down to approx. 1cm thick.

::13. Using your finger, press down to make a hole in the centre of the stottie

::14. Put in the oven and bake for just 6 minutes

::15. Carefully turn the stotty over, return to the oven and bake for a further 6 minutes

::16. Cool on a cooling rack

::17. Cut into pie-shaped pieces and slice each one in half. Eat and enjoy. Perfect with soup.

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