I’m here to visit Granny Bakes, a bakery in the medieval part of town. The gorse is Van Gogh yellow the sea is Yves Klein blue. I munch mine (from Thain’s of Aberdeen, it’s devilishly greasy and salty) and move on. Perhaps she’d have had better luck with butteries. Its carvings inspired the legend that it is the petrified form of a woman who lost a bet with the devil that she could bake bannocks faster than he could build a road. More than 1,200 years old, this Pictish monolith is one of the area’s great sights. Photograph: Getty Imagesįrom Aberdeen I head north-west, stopping to munch a buttery by the Maiden Stone. Gardenstown village on the Banffshire coast. JG Ross, the largest manufacturer, plans to reintroduce the old recipe and offer a “traditional” buttery again. He bemoans the way most big commercial bakers have swapped the butter and lard for palm oil. Martin Gillespie of Slow Food Aberdeen lays out 11 butteries – sorry, rowies – on a cafe table to demonstrate the variety: “ Smiths of Huntly, Sinclairs of Rhynie, the Ythan Bakery in Ellon …” Gillespie recently organised a World Buttery Championships to raise awareness that rowies are “endangered heritage food”. The city sparkles in the sun, a glitter of mica in the granite. There is a linguistic divide between city and shire: as one aficionado puts it, “The toonsers ca’ them rowies and the teuchters ca’ them butteries.”Īberdeen is where I’m headed next. “One of my pals has had a triple heart bypass and has been told by the doctor to stop eating them,” says Piper. Piper once contributed to a song celebrating Aitkens it runs to 42 verses, and he is minded to add a 43rd, turning the song from ode to eulogy as the business has been reported to be closing. Local musician Ian Shand, known as Piper for his bagpipe skills, is wearing a T-shirt printed with the logo of Aitkens, the bakery he prefers every buttery eater has their favourite. Photograph: Peter RossĪberdeenshire is full of wee bakers, and a buttery odyssey is a fine way to explore the area, heart gladdening and arteries hardening as you go. Shona Jamieson, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef, has returned to her native north-east and started a bakery, selling butteries at an honesty box for 50p each.Ĭhef Shona Jamieson runs an artisan bakery, and sells butteries at her honesty box. I’d picked it up from Highlanders Bakehouse in Crathie, by Balmoral Castle. I had brought my own bag of evil to Mr Ballater’s shop. “Evil bricks of tasty,” is the unimprovable description given by the film director Duncan Jones, who spent part of his childhood in Aberdeen. If you visit Aberdeenshire and do not eat butteries, you haven’t visited Aberdeenshire.įlat, layered pastries, butteries look like roadkill croissants and are made from butter, lard, salt, sugar, flour and yeast. What is a buttery? It’s the characteristic staple of north-east Scotland, as much a part of the local identity as the lush green landscape and the Doric dialect. A local greybeard, Colin, who introduced himself as the village idiot (“but I’ve got an awfa lot of competition”) sighs as if such ignorance pains him.
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