Irish Brown Bread
We travelled together in Ireland last year, Leah and I. ( pictorial evidence in our “About” post.) Being food obsessives, from day 1 we were oohing and aahing over the fabulous bread we were served at B&Bs for breakfast and in pubs with a ploughman’s lunches. We knew enough to identify it as soda bread, but what had us intrigued was the dense chewy texture, it was made with more than just simple whole wheat flour. I asked a few home cooks about the ingredients but my questions were generally met with a shoulder shrug and “it’s just brown bread.” The recipes for Irish brown bread I sought out after I came home didn’t resonate at all, so brown bread in my mind became just another reason to return to Ireland.
Move on 6 months and the Australian Gourmet traveller publishes a British issue and lo and behold it includes recipe for soda bread including both oatmeal and treacle in the line up of ingredients. Now that resonated with my palate memory so I gave it a try, sticking rigidly to the recipe as printed. What a fabulous result! Next time I will add a 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds and I’ll dream again of being in Kinsale?
This recipe was contributed to the Australian Gourmet traveller by Aussie Brett Graham, Michelin hatted chef at the Ledbury and co owner of the Harwood Arms in London.
Black Treacle Soda Bread
400g whole meal flour
120g SR flour
1 tablespoon bicarbonate
200g fine oatmeal
1 1/2 tablespoon sea salt flakes
480mls mik
280mls thick yoghurt
50g black treacle
1 1/2 tablespoon rolled oats
Preheat the oven to 165C. Grease and flour a large loaf tin
Sift flours and bicarbonate into a large bowl, mix in fine oatmeal and salt. Whisk together the milk yoghurt and treacle. Make a well in the centre of the flour, tip in the liquids and mix until just combined. Tip into the prepared loaf tin, sprinkle with oats then bake until done in the centre when tested with a skewer, about 60 minutes. Rest in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out. Best eaten warm on day it is made.
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Please Pass the Recipe by Sandra Gay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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Honestly, the pleasure was all mine. This bread is as good as it gets!!!
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yum! thank you for finding this recipe….I’ve thought about the brown bread from Ireland a few times so I’ll definitely give this a try
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