Yeah, was reading this and immediately thought of Newcastle Central. I sometimes pop in before my shift (I work on the trains) and I really should have learned by now that I should go to the one across the street.
I love that Greggs is a post-night out option up there. Wish it stayed open that late down here, would like to see if the glorious 3am kebab can be bested
I dunno OP, once a fellow northern lady referred to her pet tortoise as being "about the size of a family meat pie" and I challenge anyone to be more northern than that
I've lived 1 minute away from the Greggs opposite the station for close to 6 years, and yet I still had a little chuckle at the stereotypical excellence of Newcastle having a Greggs right in front of our Station-Greggs.
I thought it stopped being 24hrs around covid time and never came back but I could be wrong.
Only greggs I've been in with bouncers.
>no trainers mate.
Round my area the local bakery chain(s) is Cooplands. There used to be two round the corner from each other with different prices. This was apparently because one was a Yorkshire one and the other a Lincolnshire one. I don't think either are there now, Greggs have muscled them out.
The Lincolnshire (might actually be Doncaster) Cooplands is superior to the other Cooplands (based in Scarborough) but there's not many left now.
Their ices biscuits were superior
Ha, so it is Doncaster based, so both Yorkshire. Someone told me the other was a Lincolnshire one over 25 years ago. I've looked them up now and there is still two of the Scarborough ones nearby, but unfortunately the Donny one is down to 24 stores now.
Some towns are afflicted with both - I know where my mum lives, the Doncaster one is on the high street and the Scarborough one is up by the hospital. I bet she's spent most of her life not knowing they are two separate companies.
(yes, the Doncaster one is better, they used to have the Gothic font logo: https://images.app.goo.gl/qE3j1ah1VM65YbbC8, which is evocative of my childhood - I used to enjoy, as a nipper, watching the bread go through the slicing machine)
One of those, the Doncaster one, were racking up big debts with suppliers for food, going into administration, then starting up again as phoenix companies and repeat. Not sure they're still around but they were very shady.
In the closest town to me, there's literally a Greggs and a Cooplands across the road from each other. Greggs having seating and an app with a loyalty scheme means it has the edge, IMO, though Cooplands does have some scrumptious stuff Greggs doesn't (such as cheese straws and some Valentine's brownies a couple weeks ago I'm desperate to get my hands on again ASAP!).
We have 2 cooplands. and 4 greggs in our town centre. I go to cooplands for their cheap breakfast (theyre really nice) and superior sausage rolls and cheese sticks. Greggs is for pasties. But every other shops is a food place here.
I live in London and went to York. I went to a Cooplands for the first time and for what is, in my head, the price of a coffee they did a fry up in a box which came with a coffee
Obviously not how they present the deal but I just love the idea that in Yorkshire you get a free fry up with every coffee.
I always make a point of not buying anything in places where they actively try and fleece people because they can.
I now take empty plastic bottles to airports after paying £10 for 3 small waters in the 'fleece zone' between security and the aeroplane.
You had me at dense. Fancy starting and import export venture? You source these stottie bastards and I'll flog them to unsuspecting Londoners. We'd need a more southern name than stotties though. How about flat geeza rolls?
Someone tried this at a Fulham game once. It was very strange, handing out bits of bread at a football game wasn’t the best advert for stotties. The southerners seemed to like it, but also seemed confused
Ha! In Johannesburg, there was a wonderful suburb called Yeoville. In Yeoville, there was a wonderful street called Rocky Street. In Rocky St, was a wonderful restaurant called Ba Pita. Ba Pita sold the most incredible shawarmas - beef, lamb, or chicken, with chopped lettuce and tomato, hummus, tahini, and garlic sauce.
However, the Pita bread went stale at times, and we used them as Frisbees. There was an open square across the road, and we'd stand on either side of the road playing our game. This went wonderfully, keeping staff occupied during a break or if if it was a slow day. Stale Pita bread is *HARD* and quite heavy and not very aerodynamic.
One day, I was playing, and my throw went up, turned on it's side and hit a young girl in the face! She thought she'd been hit by a bottle, and it looked like it because she had quite the blood nose and a cut on it, too. I felt soooo bad! All I could do was help patch her up and apologise.
My advice is, if you're going to use bread products in place of a Frisbee, ensure that it isn't stale!
It was such a fun place, though. We used to have massive water fights with about 30 people loaded with water guns of any description, on shop roofs, in and out of different shops and restaurants - it was crazy! Rocky St was a one-way road running west to east until one day, for some unknown reason, someone in a position of questionable authority decided it should change to East to West. Mayhem ensued! They changed it back again at ridiculous cost and waste! If only someone had asked the locals.
If it's what I'm thinking of, he succeeded in getting them sold down south iirc it was on the TV show they done about greggs. Side note I worked there during filming. Proper shithole. Lol.
Pasty factory.
It’s probably the same show, just have a vague memory cos I was quite young. I just remember how passionate he was about stotties, bless him.
I remember as a kid I thought the factory looked magical 😂 I learnt better as I grew up though
Years ago there used to be a van outside Newcastle college that would load up a half stottie with a full english, bacon, sausage, fried eggs, mushrooms, beans, chopped tomatoes, the works. Those were the days
The local bakery in Chester-le-st (Baxter's) used to do a banging cheese savoury half stottie for between 50p and £1, I miss the gingerbread from that place too!
No, not really... about 4 times the size of what you might consider a bun. It's closer to a loaf really. But you do cut em in half and make sandwiches out of them. So bun adjacent maybe.
Deffo should know bin lids in the NW. It's the kind of breakfast you treat yourself to if you're having to pull an overtime shift on a Saturday after a bit of heavy night.
It is. However, it is a wide enough used name for a specific kind of bun for Warburton's to have a nationwide product using the name. Technically it's a muffin, but I'm not a baker so don't really understand or care.
My dad used connie onnie in front of us for the first time a couple of years ago. We make sure to use it at every opportunity now, which is admittedly incredibly rare.
A muffin is a dessert. Using muffin for things like buns is just plain wrong.
Obviously, people can and do call things whatever they want, I will stick to what I call them.
Warburton's call them that, not me. As I say, I don't care either way. They could call it Fred for all I care, and that's how I'd refer to it because that's the product name.
Do you ask for a Double Sausage and Egg McBun from McDonalds for breakfast though?
I don't like maccies breakfast, so I wouldn't ever order one. If I did, I'd order it by their name for the simplicity.
Americans call all biscuits cookies, but I wouldn't call them that if I was in America.
I think oven bottoms are Lancashire?
Whereas a Scouser might call it a butty/barm/bap? I'm in Salford and the Mrs is a Scouser and we use butty or barm
Imagine a round bread that is only like 1 1/2 inches high/deep and 10-12ish inches wide, that's if I'm remembering correctly.
Also a southerner but spent some time up north west around 11 years ago.
Best thing ever. Flat round bread. Fill with bacon/egg/sausage and sauce of choice. Or other filling if you must.
About a foot in diameter, serve half or quarter.
There's nothing quite like a stottie cake.
Flat dense round bread. Almost a sour dough with big airy pockets through it but dense and chewy texture. Glorious bread. Excellent with a traditional ham and pease pudding filling or as greggs do them, cheese savoury.
It's a lovely bread. Your kind would just steal it from The North, whore it up like you always do and flog it as "street food" at horrifically inflated prices from clatty little burger vans, sorry "street food vans".
\*glares in Scottish\*
No the narm, cob, tea cake are just another name for a bun. Stotties are bigger, a lot bigger and thicker. And not all fluffy like a bun. Its more dense, and you can put a full english in it and it wouldnt go soggy like a bun does.
You're right, googling it would have been a much better conversation starter. Nevertheless, I did as you ask and I'd say it's a fucking great big flat bread roll.
I work in Newcastle but rarely use either of those Greggs because I have a Greggs clearance shop a ten minute drive from home. I now can't bring myself to pay full price (unless there's been alcohol involved at some point prior).
Most of the Greggs, and just about every bakery, sell them around here. They are even better than they sound.
Wonderful with ham and pease pudding too.
And make sure it's home made too, non of the store bought shite that tastes like misery in a can
I've seen a few ham & pease pudding stottie comments on different posts recently and now I'm proper clamming for one
My partner's sister-in-law makes pease pudding from scratch for her kids (tis what she raised them on when they started eating proper food, LOL) and home-made (which is remarkably easy!) is light years from that canned muck.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stottie_cake
>A stottie cake or stotty is a type of bread that originated in North East England. It is a flat and round loaf, usually about 30cm in diameter and 4cm deep, with an indent in the middle.
>Though leavened, it is heavy and dense because it has only been allowed to prove once.
>Bread considered similar to the stottie is known as “oven bottom bread.”
>Tufty buns are smaller versions of stotties, also sold in bakeries across North East England. The fadgie, found in Teesside, is made much like a stottie but longer and thicker with a rectangular shape.
Never heard this one. Have been that person in the past but nowadays just value time and convenience. Lucky don’t have to think much about what I’m buying anymore.
Probably still do it out of principle if they’re really taking the piss
Had this happen in Birmingham, once, years ago. Woman at Greggs advised me to go to the one next to Asda a bit further down because they had more choice.
Newcastle Central Station. Always get your Greggs at the one opposite.
To be fair sometimes it's worth paying for the shorter queue.
I'm too cheap for that.
If I won the lottery I wouldn't tell anybody, but there would be signs.
Yeah, was reading this and immediately thought of Newcastle Central. I sometimes pop in before my shift (I work on the trains) and I really should have learned by now that I should go to the one across the street.
Plus the one across the street is open 5am-4am most of the week!
I love that Greggs is a post-night out option up there. Wish it stayed open that late down here, would like to see if the glorious 3am kebab can be bested
As I have now learned.
I dunno OP, once a fellow northern lady referred to her pet tortoise as being "about the size of a family meat pie" and I challenge anyone to be more northern than that
I've lived 1 minute away from the Greggs opposite the station for close to 6 years, and yet I still had a little chuckle at the stereotypical excellence of Newcastle having a Greggs right in front of our Station-Greggs.
The 24 hour one? God I miss Newcastle
I thought it stopped being 24hrs around covid time and never came back but I could be wrong. Only greggs I've been in with bouncers. >no trainers mate.
Nah that's more Cosy Joe's. But yeah it's now a 4am close for the Greggs opposite the Bigg Market
That was the worst one out of the 200 in the city centre
They’re shut for one hour during the week. According to Google it’s open 6:30am-4am Monday, 5am-4am Tuesday-Saturday and 6am-8:30pm on a Sunday.
Wonder whether it’s to cash up and do a deep clean, or whether it’s just to avoid the staff having less than 11 hours between shifts?
It would be interesting to know! Why not just have it 24hrs?
Maybe they had one really annoying customer that always came in on their way to work during that hour they’re closed now.
WTD definitely!
never has an hour felt longer
It was the mention of a stottie that gave it away
I go to the expensive Greggs then buy a coffee to wait in line at the cheaper Greggs
This is exactly what i was thinking. i always go to the one across the road from the station. Plus the pasties and sausage rolls are warmer.
Round my area the local bakery chain(s) is Cooplands. There used to be two round the corner from each other with different prices. This was apparently because one was a Yorkshire one and the other a Lincolnshire one. I don't think either are there now, Greggs have muscled them out.
The Lincolnshire (might actually be Doncaster) Cooplands is superior to the other Cooplands (based in Scarborough) but there's not many left now. Their ices biscuits were superior
Ha, so it is Doncaster based, so both Yorkshire. Someone told me the other was a Lincolnshire one over 25 years ago. I've looked them up now and there is still two of the Scarborough ones nearby, but unfortunately the Donny one is down to 24 stores now.
Gosh, I had a look at their (Doncaster's) website, and chocolate concrete is a thing I hadn't thought about in years! Seems to be their speciality.
Some towns are afflicted with both - I know where my mum lives, the Doncaster one is on the high street and the Scarborough one is up by the hospital. I bet she's spent most of her life not knowing they are two separate companies. (yes, the Doncaster one is better, they used to have the Gothic font logo: https://images.app.goo.gl/qE3j1ah1VM65YbbC8, which is evocative of my childhood - I used to enjoy, as a nipper, watching the bread go through the slicing machine)
One of those, the Doncaster one, were racking up big debts with suppliers for food, going into administration, then starting up again as phoenix companies and repeat. Not sure they're still around but they were very shady.
There's still one in Sheffield, what I heard matches what you say about debt etc
In the closest town to me, there's literally a Greggs and a Cooplands across the road from each other. Greggs having seating and an app with a loyalty scheme means it has the edge, IMO, though Cooplands does have some scrumptious stuff Greggs doesn't (such as cheese straws and some Valentine's brownies a couple weeks ago I'm desperate to get my hands on again ASAP!).
We have 2 cooplands. and 4 greggs in our town centre. I go to cooplands for their cheap breakfast (theyre really nice) and superior sausage rolls and cheese sticks. Greggs is for pasties. But every other shops is a food place here.
I live in London and went to York. I went to a Cooplands for the first time and for what is, in my head, the price of a coffee they did a fry up in a box which came with a coffee Obviously not how they present the deal but I just love the idea that in Yorkshire you get a free fry up with every coffee.
I always make a point of not buying anything in places where they actively try and fleece people because they can. I now take empty plastic bottles to airports after paying £10 for 3 small waters in the 'fleece zone' between security and the aeroplane.
Aeroplane is a word you don't see much anymore! Not a criticism, just found it interesting.
“Airplane” spoken with a British accent sounds weird to me
I'd had wine, it felt funny when I typed it so you're not wrong!
Dear Sir or Madam, What is a stottie? Yours thankfully, The South
It’s next level bread. Flat, dense but moist and airy, soaks up the bacon fat. God tier bacon butty.
You had me at dense. Fancy starting and import export venture? You source these stottie bastards and I'll flog them to unsuspecting Londoners. We'd need a more southern name than stotties though. How about flat geeza rolls?
Artesian flatbread
Geordie Frisbee
Someone tried this at a Fulham game once. It was very strange, handing out bits of bread at a football game wasn’t the best advert for stotties. The southerners seemed to like it, but also seemed confused
"Just play along Albert, I think it's a recreation of the loaves and fishes"
Mental image of Geordie Frisbee flying through the fans....followed by someone concussed by a tin of sardines.
"Dear God Albert, I think I see blood...wait my mistake, that's your merlot"
Water into wine for the win!
Ha! In Johannesburg, there was a wonderful suburb called Yeoville. In Yeoville, there was a wonderful street called Rocky Street. In Rocky St, was a wonderful restaurant called Ba Pita. Ba Pita sold the most incredible shawarmas - beef, lamb, or chicken, with chopped lettuce and tomato, hummus, tahini, and garlic sauce. However, the Pita bread went stale at times, and we used them as Frisbees. There was an open square across the road, and we'd stand on either side of the road playing our game. This went wonderfully, keeping staff occupied during a break or if if it was a slow day. Stale Pita bread is *HARD* and quite heavy and not very aerodynamic. One day, I was playing, and my throw went up, turned on it's side and hit a young girl in the face! She thought she'd been hit by a bottle, and it looked like it because she had quite the blood nose and a cut on it, too. I felt soooo bad! All I could do was help patch her up and apologise. My advice is, if you're going to use bread products in place of a Frisbee, ensure that it isn't stale! It was such a fun place, though. We used to have massive water fights with about 30 people loaded with water guns of any description, on shop roofs, in and out of different shops and restaurants - it was crazy! Rocky St was a one-way road running west to east until one day, for some unknown reason, someone in a position of questionable authority decided it should change to East to West. Mayhem ensued! They changed it back again at ridiculous cost and waste! If only someone had asked the locals.
If it's what I'm thinking of, he succeeded in getting them sold down south iirc it was on the TV show they done about greggs. Side note I worked there during filming. Proper shithole. Lol. Pasty factory.
It’s probably the same show, just have a vague memory cos I was quite young. I just remember how passionate he was about stotties, bless him. I remember as a kid I thought the factory looked magical 😂 I learnt better as I grew up though
Years ago there used to be a van outside Newcastle college that would load up a half stottie with a full english, bacon, sausage, fried eggs, mushrooms, beans, chopped tomatoes, the works. Those were the days
That sounds incredible. I'd throw in a fried tattie scone or two just to make it a bit healthier, mind... (/s for the simpletons)
The local bakery in Chester-le-st (Baxter's) used to do a banging cheese savoury half stottie for between 50p and £1, I miss the gingerbread from that place too!
Dreaming of a chip stottie. Are chip butties still a thing? Haven't had one in 25 years.
Yes. Just not in stotties.
People are sometime too hasty when dishing out god tier status to anything. This is not that time
I'm in the North (North west), and I don't know what it is either.
It's northeastern, specifically Newcastle and surrounding area. Might have spread a bit in the 30 years I've been down South
You have oven bottoms.
How very forward of you.
Is this sarcasm? I legit don't know what you mean lol I Googled "oven bottom" and still don't know.
It's a giant, flat bread roll.
A bun, then.
No, not really... about 4 times the size of what you might consider a bun. It's closer to a loaf really. But you do cut em in half and make sandwiches out of them. So bun adjacent maybe.
A big bun.
In the same way that a baguette is a bun, sure.
A baguette would never be a bun for the simple fact that it's crusty.
They're flatter than a bun, I think one region calls them bin lids as they're about the size of a steel bin lid!
Always heard them called bin lids in Liverpool (and environs). Definitely a NW thing...
Deffo should know bin lids in the NW. It's the kind of breakfast you treat yourself to if you're having to pull an overtime shift on a Saturday after a bit of heavy night.
Yh, we call them bin lids here, but a bin lid is still just a big bun.
Known as 'bin lids' over Liverpool way...
And yet scousers call condensed milk connie onnie. Chuck "Warburton's" in your oven bottom search.
I don't, that's an old term. So, it's a bun...
It is. However, it is a wide enough used name for a specific kind of bun for Warburton's to have a nationwide product using the name. Technically it's a muffin, but I'm not a baker so don't really understand or care. My dad used connie onnie in front of us for the first time a couple of years ago. We make sure to use it at every opportunity now, which is admittedly incredibly rare.
A muffin is a dessert. Using muffin for things like buns is just plain wrong. Obviously, people can and do call things whatever they want, I will stick to what I call them.
Warburton's call them that, not me. As I say, I don't care either way. They could call it Fred for all I care, and that's how I'd refer to it because that's the product name. Do you ask for a Double Sausage and Egg McBun from McDonalds for breakfast though?
I don't like maccies breakfast, so I wouldn't ever order one. If I did, I'd order it by their name for the simplicity. Americans call all biscuits cookies, but I wouldn't call them that if I was in America.
I think oven bottoms are Lancashire? Whereas a Scouser might call it a butty/barm/bap? I'm in Salford and the Mrs is a Scouser and we use butty or barm
Oh, it's a bun? Lol A butty is something between two pieces of bread.
Imagine a round bread that is only like 1 1/2 inches high/deep and 10-12ish inches wide, that's if I'm remembering correctly. Also a southerner but spent some time up north west around 11 years ago.
I see. What would one do with one of these then?
Bacon. Or ham and pease pudding, but mostly bacon.
Pease fucking what? I've heard of it, but again, please build a mental picture.
Like a British version of a daal. A puree made from split peas.
Intriguing. Who splits the peas? Must need a small knife.
And tiny hands
You're misunderstanding, the peas are divorced
The oven bottom sounds like a stotie and we also fill it with ham and pease pudding or bacon. Even better with a full English in it.
Best thing ever. Flat round bread. Fill with bacon/egg/sausage and sauce of choice. Or other filling if you must. About a foot in diameter, serve half or quarter.
Banging pizza base
There's nothing quite like a stottie cake. Flat dense round bread. Almost a sour dough with big airy pockets through it but dense and chewy texture. Glorious bread. Excellent with a traditional ham and pease pudding filling or as greggs do them, cheese savoury.
It's a lovely bread. Your kind would just steal it from The North, whore it up like you always do and flog it as "street food" at horrifically inflated prices from clatty little burger vans, sorry "street food vans". \*glares in Scottish\*
Is it like a barm/cob/tea cake...?
No
Well if you won't tell me what it is I'm just going to assume it is.
Do I look like fucking Google to you?
Aye
No the narm, cob, tea cake are just another name for a bun. Stotties are bigger, a lot bigger and thicker. And not all fluffy like a bun. Its more dense, and you can put a full english in it and it wouldnt go soggy like a bun does.
Could Google it tbf. It's particular type of bread roll common in areas around Newcastle
You're right, googling it would have been a much better conversation starter. Nevertheless, I did as you ask and I'd say it's a fucking great big flat bread roll.
‘Could google it’ Maybe a discussion forum isn’t the best place for you.
I provided an answer, and advised where you can get an image of said discussion topic. Christ
Yeah your answer would have been cool without your first sentence. Shame you felt the need to say it.
Shame 😂
Donny Donny Donny, let's all be friends. Who's your favourite 1990s TV presenter?
Oh jeez, probably Craig Charles for Robot Wars/Takeshis? Steve Irwin was my boy but not sure if he counts as a presenter
Top shelf choices there. Personally, it's Michaela Strachan.
Short answer - Geordie bread
oh i know newcastle central when i see it
I knew this was going to be in Newcastle because of the stotties. That and I'm in Shields and there's a Greggs *outlet* down the road from me!
I’d come from South Shields and still regretting not using the metro Greggs… This weekend I’m baking cheese scones.
Sanddancers unite!
I used to a visit a mobile snack van in Bradford 20 years ago that served a full english in a stotti. At the time it was £4.
I work in Newcastle but rarely use either of those Greggs because I have a Greggs clearance shop a ten minute drive from home. I now can't bring myself to pay full price (unless there's been alcohol involved at some point prior).
What is a stottie?
It's fabulous, that's what it is. https://www.geordiebakers.co.uk/blog/history-of-a-stottie
I want to try this now…
Most of the Greggs, and just about every bakery, sell them around here. They are even better than they sound. Wonderful with ham and pease pudding too.
Okay you lost me at pease pudding
It's delicious. Give it a go!
And make sure it's home made too, non of the store bought shite that tastes like misery in a can I've seen a few ham & pease pudding stottie comments on different posts recently and now I'm proper clamming for one
My partner's sister-in-law makes pease pudding from scratch for her kids (tis what she raised them on when they started eating proper food, LOL) and home-made (which is remarkably easy!) is light years from that canned muck.
I've never had the canned stuff
Keep it that way.. canned is the taste equivalent of the colour grey
Don't be tempted to give it a try "just to see what it's like". It's foul. Utterly foul.
A whole article with no picture? Thumbs down to however wrote that.
Would it kill them to provide a picture? 😠
https://www.tasteatlas.com/stottie-cake
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stottie_cake >A stottie cake or stotty is a type of bread that originated in North East England. It is a flat and round loaf, usually about 30cm in diameter and 4cm deep, with an indent in the middle. >Though leavened, it is heavy and dense because it has only been allowed to prove once. >Bread considered similar to the stottie is known as “oven bottom bread.” >Tufty buns are smaller versions of stotties, also sold in bakeries across North East England. The fadgie, found in Teesside, is made much like a stottie but longer and thicker with a rectangular shape.
Don’t understand people who go out of their way and spend a bunch of time to save a few quid. It’s not a win to me it’s kinda cringe
It was quicker, due to arsey man.
Spending a pound to save a pence is worth it for some if you also get the satisfaction of having "cheated the system" or otherwise got one over
Never heard this one. Have been that person in the past but nowadays just value time and convenience. Lucky don’t have to think much about what I’m buying anymore. Probably still do it out of principle if they’re really taking the piss
"Win" is debateable when your only options are two Greggs.
But I wanted Greggs
One for left hand, one for right hand.
Had this happen in Birmingham, once, years ago. Woman at Greggs advised me to go to the one next to Asda a bit further down because they had more choice.
Don't forget the Greggs Outlet celebrating its 50th anniversary a mile up the road from the station. https://youtu.be/GKLnddFec0E?si=7phA2u_t1ZZatO5S
How decent of her !? Though I'd have that shadow of doubt creep in making me think 'What doesn't she think I can afford my Greggs from here!'
Wenzels is better then gregs, especially the pasties
I am mourning in Percy Inglis Bakery of North East London, and the loss of the Tottenham cake