Barm
In Manchester and much of north-west England, a barm or barm cake is a soft round bread roll, the standard bread for a chip butty or a bacon sandwich. The name comes from barm, the froth that forms on fermenting beer, which was once used as the yeast to raise the dough.
In practice
Cafés and chippies across Greater Manchester sell chip barms, bacon barms and sausage barms, and the word appears on menus without explanation. The same roll goes by a dozen names in Britain - bap, roll, bun, cob, batch - and each region is sure it is right. A barm is not the same as a muffin, which in Britain means a flatter, toasted bread.
Why it matters to newcomers
It is the simplest piece of local vocabulary to use from day one: ask for a bacon barm in a Manchester café and you will be understood immediately. Ask for a bap and you will still get one, along with a look.
Related
- Curry Mile - Manchester's other famous food street
- Northern Quarter - for brunch rather than barms
- Our kid - another word that marks you as local
Source: Wiktionary: barm.