Instructions: I thought this would be an easy one to respond to as I have many regional British cook books but an hour later I was still thumbing indexes and failing to come up with a recipe. The best I can offer you is a quote from F.Marian McNeills The Scots Kitchen - Its lore and recipes

"Struan Micheil (St Michaels Cake) In the Hebrides there is a traditional harvest cake made of a mixture of oats, barley and rye (representing the fruits of the field) baked on September 29th in honour of St Michael. As the bannock gains consistency in the firing it is covered on both sides with three successive layers of a batter of cream, eggs and butter, in the manner of the Beltane bannock Various ingredients are introduced into small struan as cranberries, blackberries, brambles, caraways and wild honey"

The batter that is referred to as covering the bannock in layers sounds rather like a glaze of butter, cream and egg which is described elsewhere in the book. A bannock would be raised with bicarbonate of soda and an acidic liquid such as buttermilk rather than yeast and is cooked on a hot griddle plate not in the oven.

The nearest recipe I could find was the following from The Food and Cooking of Russia by Lesley Chamberlain which is described as making wonderful toast due to the oats used. Im sure you could substitute some of the rye flour for barley flour if you were trying to capture the flavours of a hebridean struan.

450ml water boiling
180 g oat flakes or oatmeal
1/2 tablespoon of dried yeast, not instant 450g wholemeal flour - or a mix of strong white and wholemeal 225g rye flour 1 tsp salt

Pour the boiling water less a few tablespoons over the oats and allow to stand for an hour. Add the yeast, dissolved in warm water, then add the flours and the salt to the oat and water mixture. Blend well and knead until you have a smooth dough. This may require a little extra wheat flour. Leave to rise until nearly double in bulk. Shape into loaves (sorry no details given about this but I would guess a couple of small loaf pans for this amount) rise again, bake at 425F for about 50 minutes gradually reducing the heat. Cool on a wire rack.

Somebody has also asked about strong flour. In England flour packaged as strong is basically bread flour and usually contains 10-12% protein. In Britain millers often mix Canadian flour with British flour to increase the gluten content. The type of flour called for in Irish Soda breads can vary but often includes a stone-ground wholemeal flour mixed with some white bread flour. Having watched Darina Allen of the Irish Ballymaloe cookery school making soda bread I think you have to learn to handle the dough like a fairy, her hands hardly touched the dough as she mixed it, and it was complete in a blink. She is a wonderful lady and her book on A Year at Ballymaloe is packed with superb, simple recipes. The schools web site is

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