Bakers—retail: jargon-buster

Battenberg cake
Just about every British baker will proudly display this cake, with its distinctive checked pattern of pink and yellow squares. The cake was created by bakers to celebrate the marriage of Queen Victoria's daughter to Prince Louis of Battenberg.

Bundt cake
Confusingly, this name refers to the cake tin the baker made the cake in rather than the flavour of the cake. The "Bundt" is a ring-shaped baking tin with folds around the outer edge, creating a circular cake with a hole in the middle.

Eccles cake
Another British favourite, the Eccles cake is a puff pastry cake with sugar and raisins. Bakers in the town of Eccles, in Salford, often refer to them fondly as "squashed fly pies" because of the appearance of the raisins.

Gluten
Gluten is a form of protein that is naturally contained in wheat, rye, barley and oats. Some people have difficulty digesting this protein and are described as gluten-intolerant. Many bakers now offer a range of "gluten-free" foods.

Italian breads
In recent years bakers have begun to introduce Italian loaves to their shops. Focaccia is flat, oven-baked bread usually made with olive oil and seasoned with herbs. Ciabatta (meaning "carpet slipper", describing its shape) is a light, airy white loaf with distinctively large air pockets or holes inside a semi-hard crust.

Mille-feuille
This French term for puff pastry literally means "a thousand sheets". It is this pastry that bakers use in the ever-popular custard or cream slice.

Organic breads
Bakers make these products from all-organic ingredients, including flour milled from crops grown without chemical intervention and where no chemicals are added during the milling process.

Soda bread
This is Irish bread that bakers make using baking soda and buttermilk as the raising agent instead of the more traditional yeast.

Teacake
You may think you know what a teacake is, but it all depends where in the country the baker is. In the south of England it's a sweet bread-based bun with sultanas or other dried fruit. But in bakers further north, there's likely to be no dried fruit in your teacake.

White flour
This is flour that uses only the heart of the wheat kernel; it is refined to remove the bran and germinal layer.

Wholemeal flour
This is flour that contains all components of the grain: the "outer bran", a good source of fibre, and the "germinal layer" full of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. This flour is the main ingredient that bakers use in any wholemeal bread.