Your chance to vote for your top bacon sarnie

Apr 1 2009 by Jane Hall, The Journal

Click here to nominate your favourite bacon butty

STOTTIE cake or white bread? Brown sauce or ketchup? Butter or margarine? On its own or accompanied by an egg?

It seems everyone has an opinion on what makes the perfect bacon sandwich. Now’s your chance to tell the world as the hunt officially gets under way today to sniff out the North East’s best bacon sarnie.

The Journal has joined forces with Eat! NewcastleGateshead to track down a bacon butty worthy of setting the region’s collective taste buds watering – and carry on a long and illustrious North East tradition.

For it seems Northerners have been starting off the day the bacon way for at least 2,000 years.

The smell of sizzling lardum would have been a familiar wake-up call for Roman soldiers stationed on Hadrian’s Wall.

But there is evidence that long before the Emperor Claudius’s troops finally conquered Britain in AD 43, that the Celts were also crazy about rashers.

It’s almost certain that the argument over what makes the perfect bacon butty has been raging just as long.

But the time has come to lay the disagreement to rest.

Today the gloves are off and the challenge is set: to find the North East’s ultimate bacon sandwich.

The appropriately named B-Factor aims to track down the region’s best bacon bite bar none.

Readers are being urged to make their nominations online from today as The Journal Taste North East England campaign teams up with Eat! NewcastleGateshead to honour those who go that extra mile in creating the perfect bacon sandwich moment.