It's round and rugged and it's Biddulph's biggest export. From the hottest shop in the High Street, the humble oatcake is being produced in it's thousands and winning it's way across land and sea to bring a comforting taste of North Staffordshire to expats all over the world.
For just like Leek's old Adams Butter, which he started his life packing, Steve Povey's oatcakes are spreading everywhere. And Steve and his staff have to man the production line six days a week to keep up with the weekly demand for his native North Staffordshire delicacy.

People working abroad so crave their taste of home they are prepared to stump up the high cost of postage to have them sent out, the latest order coming from Barclays Bank staff based in Japan who buy eight dozen oatcakes every month.

They are a treat for staff at Harrods in London - thanks to a train driver from Biddulph acting as courier to dish up a weekly treat for his sister and her colleagues, and Geordie accents are regularly heard in the High Street shop as ex miners re-visit their old home to pick up a batch of oatcakes to fill up their freezers in Tyneside.

Forty five year old Steve, who was born in Leek where he's well known as a local councillor and organiser of landmark celebrations, was brought up on oatcakes and set up his shop in Biddulph twelve years ago. He explained: "there was an oatcake shop in town before - at one time you could find a baker in every street in someone's back kitchen - but the proprietor went bankrupt and I took a gamble, rescued the machinery from his garage, copied the recipe from the back of an old fag packet, and the rest is history."

Steve has taken a time honoured tradition into the 21 st century with his fast - food version - a filled oatcake in a microwavable box sold at local filling stations and fast food outlets. And he's in the process of setting up a website so that more natives of North Staffordshire can access their favourite treat, wherever they may be.

He explained: "We get postcards from customers all over the world whose relatives are sending oatcake food parcels out to them. They are quite heavy and not cheap to post - I send them up to Scotland in batches of six dozen and people are prepared to pay for them as a treat."

Locally, Steve has Alton Towers and both Stoke City and Port vale football clubs on his list of 96 regular customers.

His recipe is a closely guarded secret, but he will tell you that the oatcakes contain no artificial additives, fine oatmeal, plain flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda, yeast and water. The wet mix is poured into a machine which delivers just the right amount per oatcake directly onto a gas powered hotplate known as a "bakston". They are made in batches of 37 dozen and, with the 16 foot long hotplates pumping out constant heat, tossing the oatcakes is warm work.

It's a long day too, Steve starting at 4am to have fresh oatcakes ready on time for shift workers who call in on their way to and from work, and sometimes not finishing until 7pm. He revealed: "Sundays are our busiest days when people will treat themselves to an oatcake breakfast and we get lots of tourists, walkers and people visiting Biddulph Grange Gardens coming in. I've put in a viewing panel so that customers can see the oatcakes being baked and the Japanese always come in crowds and take pictures."

The High Street shop serves up oatcakes fresh from the hotplate with a staggering 40 different fillings, ranging from a 50p buttered version up to a £1.70 double oatcake sandwiching a filling of cheese, sausage, bacon and beans. There's "The Works" - two oatcakes with cheese, sausage, bacon, mushroom, onion, egg and tomato for £2.45, or , for the larger appetite. "The Works with Overtime" incorporating extra large helpings of filling for £2.95.

Stories abound on the history of the oatcake. Many believe it to be a Potteries tradition and it's been called all sorts of names, from Tunstall Tortilla, through Potteries Poppadom to Clay Suzzette. But Steve Povey reckons that it actually has its origins in the Staffordshire moorlands where isolated farmers would eat oatcakes when they were cut off by bad weather and couldn't reach the shops to get bread.

He revealed: "I have been handed a very old recipe from Ecton in the Manifold Valley where farmers would make their oatcakes from milk and oats. There is a Derbyshire version of the oatcake which is much thicker and stodgier. The recipe seems to have been adapted as it spread.

"But one thing is for sure, there's nowhere in the world serving up traditional oatcakes like we do in North Staffordshire and it's a tradition I'm proud to uphold."