Cobs, buns, baps or barm cakes: what do people call bread rolls? | YouGov (2024)

FAQs

What do you call this bread roll? ›

This barmy topic gives many hotly debated names to a circular blob of bread, dependent on where you come from. Around these parts it's a barm/barm cake. In the Midlands it's a cob. Elsewhere around the country it might be a roll, bun, batch, bap, teacake, stottie, Vienna. So many names!

A small round piece of bread. bun. roll. baguette.

Cob. Definition: If you're from another part of the country with a particularly strong dialect you'll know that the UK can't decide on what to call a bread roll. To Birmingham, a simple bread roll is a cob but in other parts of the country it's a bap, barm cake, bun, batch… the list goes on.

“The vast majority of people in the South call them rolls. The majority of the people living in the Midlands called them a cob in our research. In the North, a slight majority of people called them barms over baps.”

A bap is, at its simplest, a bread roll. At its more complicated, it is a tender pillow of dough, often made with milk, lard, and butter. A more humble, Scottish version of the brioche. The bap is the ideal bread for a simple meat sandwich.

yes, it translates as 'roll' but it's clearly wrong there as a bread roll refers to an oblong individual loaf of bread served alongside a meal. Phil Makey says that it is “A little bit silly to ask that question in Sheffield. All those that did not answer, "breadcake," obviously originated from far flung places!”

In co*ckney rhyming slang “bread and honey” is shortened to bread, meaning money. The person who earns a wage to support their family is often referred to as the “breadwinner.” “Dough” came on to the American slang scene in about 1840, and predated “bread” by a little more than a century.

Sweet bread, also referred to as pan dulce, buns, or coffee bread, is a bread or cake that is typically sweet in flavor. Some sweet breads, such as Portuguese pão doce, may be prepared with potato flour, which imparts a sweet flavor and light texture to them.

This could be a barm cake, bread-cake, bap, batch, bun, buttery, muffin, cob, oven bottom, roll or stotty. To add to the confusion, some names mean more than one thing. In the area north of Manchester, bread rolls are called 'teacakes'.

Definitions of buns. the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on. synonyms: ass, backside, behind, bottom, bum, butt, buttocks, can, derriere, fanny, fundament, hind end, hindquarters, keister, nates, posterior, prat, rear, rear end, rump, seat, stern, tail, tail end, tooshie, tush. type of: body part.

What is British slang for buns? ›

Other variations are 'batch', which turned up with most regularity in Coventry and Liverpool; the Lancashire 'barm'; and the West Yorkshire 'teacake'. Oldham got in on the action with 'muffin', while 'bun' and 'cob' are more generally used in north-east England and the Midlands respectively.

In the Netherlands they are called broodje. "Small bread" is also found as Italian panino, which also commonly denotes a stuffed small bread roll.

A hoagie roll or hero roll is a type of long roll used to prepare hoagie sandwiches. Hoagie rolls are sometimes toasted before being used to prepare a sandwich.