Celtic Oat Cakes

To finish up our studies of the Celtic tribes,My fourth student made Oatcakes, a Celtic recipe from this book.
It was a more difficult recipe than he has ever done before. It was in European measurements, which was grams instead of cups. Our measuring cups only had the liquid measurement milliliters, so I had to convert the measurements on the computer, which, of course did not come out evenly. We were doing things like 9 and a half tablespoons or a little less than a half a cup. My student was terrific with this. Then the last direction was to put water in the dough until it formed a nice consistency to roll out. I was afraid that he would have a hard time judging this, but he did a wonderful job adding a tiny bit of warm water at a time until it reached a good consistency. He rolled the dough out and cut them all by himself.
The oatcakes were oatey and salty and delicious. Not too dry, not too gummy. Just right. My middle student had one with butter and cheese. The rest of us had them with butter and honey.
They would be wonderful with jam as well, but alas, the poor Celts could only make a sugarless jam.

Celtic Oatcakes
225 g. oatmeal
75 g. plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
50 g. butter
water

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Put the oatmeal into a large bowl. Add the flour, salt and baking soda. Mix well. Melt butter in the microwave and add to the oat mixture. Boil some water. Gradually add the water to the mixture until you have a firm dough. Turn the dough out onto a board sprinkled with a little flour. Roll out until it is about 1 cm thick. Cut into circles. Place the circles on a greased baking tray. Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool before serving.

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