Irish Breads

Why do all these recipes use cake flour? Because they are based on Irish recipes, and Ireland only grows soft wheat. Flour in the US generally comes from hard wheat which produces a hard flour, like all-purpose and bread flour. Because of their high gluten content, doughs made from them are elastic and tough enough to hold a baked shape. However, US cake flour comes from soft winter wheat. It has about half the gluten of regular US flour so it is called soft flour, and doughs made from it have a fine, slightly crumbly texture. All flour in Europe resembles US cake flour because Europe grows only soft winter wheat. Now you know why translating a European recipe in the US has this unexpected pitfall – the flour!

History Stone Age flatbread is the earliest record of bread in Ireland. While there was always home baking, it was also a trade, bakers traveling where needed. 1478 saw the first Charter for a Bakers Guild, only a few hundred years after the bread was introduced to Ireland in the 1100s by the Anglo-Normans. While potatoes were the Irish diet staple, the 1845 potato blight that lasted to 1852 killed the crops. Then bread became their staple, and home baking took off like a rocket, resulting in many types of bread. It seems the high popularity of soda bread dates from this time. It is quick (no rising time needed), easy to make each morning, and while we know it as Irish Soda Bread, it was actually created by Native Americans, the first to be documented using a natural form of soda (pearl ash). Soda Bread became Irish in the 1830s when baking soda was first introduced to the country. And just in time; the famine caused by potato blight meant bread was needed and had to be made from the most inexpensive and basic ingredient -- flour, salt, baking soda & sour milk (these last two cause this bread to rise).

Irish Soda Bread Farls Boxty or Irish Potato Bread Ingredients From Gaelic ‘fardel’ or ‘four parts’ Traditional Irish potato pancakes.  1 cup cake flour + ½ cup Ingredients Ratios of potato & flour vary in many  ½ teaspoonful baking soda  (Same as Irish Soda Bread) recipes!  ½ cup sour milk/buttermilk  Oil/butter to grease pan Ingredients  Pinch of salt Method  1 cup cake flour + ½ cup Method 1. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl.  ½ teaspoonful baking soda 1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F. 2. Mix in the buttermilk to make a  ½ cup sour milk/buttermilk 2. Butter a baking sheet. soft dough. If it’s too wet/sticky  Pinch of salt 3. Sift all dry ingredients in a bowl. add more flour.  1 cup mashed potato 4. Mix in the buttermilk to make a 3. On a floured surface knead the Method soft dough. If it’s too wet/sticky dough about a minute then 1. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl. add more flour. flatten into a circle ½ inch thick. 2. Add the potato and buttermilk. 5. On a floured surface knead the 4. Cut into quarters, the 4 parts! 3. Mix well to make a thick batter. dough for about a minute then 5. Grease a large frying pan, put it With dryish potato, you may pat into a high round. on medium heat. need more buttermilk; if it was 6. Make a deep cross on the top 6. Cook each side of the farls 5-6 wetter add more flour. with a very sharp knife. minutes, they should be nicely 4. Grease a large frying pan, put it 7. Bake on the baking sheet for browned. on medium-high heat. about 40 minutes or until it is 7. Flip farls and cook other side. 5. On a floured surface make the golden brown and the bottom boxty in pancake-size shapes. sounds hollow when tapped. *Potato Farls can be baked stove- 6. Fry till golden brown, flip, fry *Wholegrain flour makes this top on a hot griddle, or in an oven other side. Wheaten bread, AKA Brown Soda on a baking sheet. Use a cast-iron Bread….often served with smoked skillet in the oven and Lo and *Back in the day, soda breads were salmon. Behold! Irish skillet bread) cooked in iron pots or griddles in *Add ½ cup raisins + 1 egg at step 4 *Add creamed spinach for a green open hearths, thus the famous hard for Fruit Soda Bread, or Spotted Dog, St. Patrick’s Day version or creamed crust, dense texture, and slightly popular in Lent for St. Patrick’s Day. shredded carrots for an orange one! sour tang.

Courtesy of the Daughters of the British Empire in the USA · dbenational.org · March 2021