Bread in Europe They are very light, contain preservatives (e.g. ethyl alcohol) and have a very long shelf life (often more than a month). In Ireland it is traditionally held that the end of a loaf of bread (the "heel" of the loaf) is the best part of the loaf. Other stories and myths surround this piece of the bread in Irish mythology. Irish soda bread, developed to make the most of the soft wheat grown in Ireland, is unusual for a European bread in that it is a quick bread, using the reaction of buttermilk and baking soda rather than yeast to
Crumpet If differentiated from the crumpet, a pikelet is defined as containing no yeast as a raising agent and as being cooked without a ring, making it rather flatter or thinner than a crumpet, and a thinner batter was also used. In Stoke-on-Trent, pikelets were once sold in the town's many oatcake shops. A 1932 recipe for Staffordshire pikelets specifies that they were made with flour and buttermilk, with bicarbonate of soda as a raising agent, and suggests cooking them using bacon fat. The term "pikelet" is used in Australian and New Zealand cuisine for a similarly flat cake, of the