Dave Mackenzie is right about pancakes/crumpets if you're in Scotland or Northern Ireland - crumpets are the big floppy ones, pancakes are the "Scotch" type, and the other sort of crumpets (the smaller, fatter, holey ones) don't exist so they don't need a name.

One distinction they make in those areas is between a "plain" and a "pan" loaf. The "plain" is made in a batch with other loaves so it has no crust on the sides(similar to "batch" loaves but tends to be large and white), while the "pan" is baked in a tin of its own and has crust all the way round. The standard sliced, packed loaf is called a "sliced pan", a term which is not generally understood if you ask for one in England.

I love the way the regional differences persist in our words for baked goods. So many other things have become uniform and standardised, it's good to see some local colour remaining in our speech. Someone ought to write a thesis about it before it's too late. There is a actually a branch of linguistics that creates maps to show local pronunciations, and the contour-like lines that join areas with similar words are called "isoglosses". In fact there's the makings of a whole book there. Anyone got a year or two free to go around the country buying bread and buns and mapping the conclusions?

Marje