A quart of flour two eggs beat up yolks and whites two spoonfulls of barm and as much warm milk and water as will wet it, knead it well and shape it lay it before the fire to rise half an hour and bake it another half hour.
—from an 18th century Irish cookbook manuscript
If there’s no bread in the house, it’s as if there’s no food, and any Irish cook worth his or her salt can generally whip up a batch of scones or soda bread. They’re nearly the same thing, but somehow that difference in shape affects the texture. White scones or fruit scones (as they’re called when you add raisins) seem dense and creamy, while white soda bread is fluffy and lighter. Both, like most Irish foods, benefit from lashings of good butter.
These breads, leavened by the chemical interaction of baking soda and buttermilk or sour milk, are what Americans call “quick breads.” But for us, this is just “bread,” and we distinguish between them and “yeast breads.” Baking soda, in fact, is merely called “bread soda” in Ireland, so crucial is it to the bread-making process, and it’s generally sold in large bags. The most important thing to know about soda breads is that they’re meant to be eaten the day they’re made. Scones are good warm; breads should probably cool.
Most yeast breads are bought at the store, particularly “batch,” which is a dense white loaf, heavy and full of flavor, baked in large batches with the sides of each loaf butted up against the next so when the baker separates the cooled loaves, they are delicate and white while the top is firm and dark brown. Some American sources will overnight batch to you, and it’s worth seeking out because it makes the best toast in the world.
I wish I could buy in the United States the kind of barmbrack I love at home, but to get the good stuff, you have to make it yourself. Packaged ones are too often dry and underspiced. The recipe here makes the kind I yearn for from my childhood, with raisins and golden raisins soaked overnight in tea (and sometimes a shot of whiskey), and kneaded into a buttery, egg-rich dough, fragrant with warm spices. It’s served in thick slices, thickly buttered, with a mug of milky tea, and it’s the classic Halloween treat, complete with a paper-wrapped coin inside to give luck to the finder.
White scones are more cake-like than brown scones, and they’re usually sweeter as well. They’re an afternoon tea sort of treat, or the kind of thing you’d bake for a leisurely weekend breakfast, or treat yourself to in a teashop after a morning’s shopping. They’re so fast, however, that they could also be whipped up as an afternoon snack. Serve them split and anointed with butter, or butter and jam, or filled with strawberry jam and whipped or clotted cream. The baking powder may seem like overkill, what with the action of the baking soda and buttermilk, but it truly does help them rise high and puffy.
Makes 1 dozen
3¾ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup (1 stick) butter
1 egg
¾ cup buttermilk
¼ cup heavy cream
1 Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F and lightly grease a rimless baking sheet.
2 Stir together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut the butter into pieces and use your fingers to rub it into the flour, or use two knives or a fork to cut it in, until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
3 Beat the egg and mix with the buttermilk. Make a well in the center of the flour and add the liquid all at once. Stir just until dough is soft. Don’t overmix.
4 Lightly flour a work surface and turn the dough out onto it. Pat into a square about 1-inch thick and cut them into 12 squares. (You can also cut the dough into circles with a biscuit cutter, but patting it gently and cutting it once into squares keeps the dough from being overworked and thus makes the scones more tender.)
5 Transfer to the baking sheet. If you like, brush the surface of each with the cream to give them a sheen. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until puffed and golden.
Add 1 cup raisins or golden raisins to the flour mixture after cutting in the butter.
Substitute 1 ¾ cups stone-ground whole-meal flour for 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour, and reduce the sugar to 2 tablespoons. Increase the baking time by about 5 minutes.
These are named—I have always trusted—for their big craggy exterior and not for their texture. They’re essentially a drop scone, and the fruit in them and the firmish dough means they drop onto the baking sheet with plenty of peaks visible in the dough. They bake up with more of a crunchy exterior, but inside they’re a tender fruit scone. Sprinkling them liberally with a coarse sanding sugar makes them look prettier. Because you don’t have to pat them out, they're faster and easier to slap in the oven, which is perhaps why they have a slightly more down-market feel: They’re delicious, but they’re considered kid food. The baking powder is non-traditional, but it’s there as extra insurance to help make them fluffy and light. The recipe will still work fine if you leave it out.
Makes 1 dozen
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup (1 stick) butter
¼ cup sugar
1½ cups raisins or golden raisins
1¼ cups buttermilk
1 egg
Coarse sugar for sprinkling (optional)
1 Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and lightly grease a large rimless baking sheet.
2 In a large bowl, stir together the dry ingredients and cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the raisins.
3 Beat the egg with the buttermilk. Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the liquid all at once. Stir just to combine, don’t overmix.
4 Drop 12 big scones on the baking sheet, three across, four down. Sprinkle liberally with the coarse sugar, if using. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes, until raised and golden.
This is the master recipe for basic “brown soda.” If you lived in Ireland at any time over the last couple of centuries, you’ve eaten a basic brown soda like this, possibly even one cooked over a turf fire in a bastible. (Those who know say a turf smoke gives it an indefinable but necessary flavor. I’ve always managed fine with the oven.) It is usually served for breakfast, accompanying the rashers, sausages, and eggs. Served with butter, it’s standard issue with a bowl of lunchtime soup, and it’s a sandwich with sharp Irish cheese and a tangy relish (see Onion Marmalade). A new loaf generally appears for afternoon tea, sliced thinner and eaten simply with butter, as a matter of course, before eating cake or sweets. But that’s not all. Oysters wouldn’t taste the same in Ireland unless they were followed by a bite of brown bread, and suffice it to say, it would be heresy to serve smoked salmon without a fresh-cut loaf.
Don’t forget to cut a cross in the top. Some say it’s to let the fairies escape, but whether you’re concerned about spirits in your bread or not, the cross helps the bread bake evenly, and, after it has cooled, lets you break it into four even-sized “farls” for cutting.
Makes 1 medium loaf, 6 to 8 servings
3 cups coarse, stone-ground wholewheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1½ to 1¾ cups buttermilk
1 Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
2 In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flours, soda, and salt. Add enough of the buttermilk to make a stiff dough.
3 Sprinkle a little flour on a rimless baking sheet and turn out the dough onto the floured surface. Shape the dough into a round and use a sharp knife to slice a large X about an inch deep across the entire surface.
4 Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until risen and golden-brown on top. The bottom should sound hollow when tapped and a tester should come out with a few crumbs clinging to it. Wrap in a clean tea towel and cool completely on a rack before slicing.
This is like the luxury auto version of regular brown soda’s runabout car. It’s got a heap of extra bran in it, sometimes an egg, and either buttermilk or yogurt. All of us home bakers trying to make this are trying to emulate McCambridge’s, which has been purveying this dense and fragrantly wheaty bread since the 1930's. Their version is, fair enough, a trade secret, and if I could get McCambridge’s regularly in New York, I would never bake it myself again. Until that day comes, however, this version comes pretty close. Part of the secret is the wheat bran, and part is the very wet dough, which requires a loaf pan. You don’t have to use butter or an egg—the commercial brands don’t contain any—but they help make a moister bread for home cooks.
Makes 1 8 3 4-inch loaf
2½ cups stone-ground whole-wheat flour
½ cup all purpose flour
½ cup wheat germ
¼ cup wheat bran
1½ teaspoons salt
1½ teaspoons baking soda
¼ cup (½ stick) butter, at room temperature
1 egg
1½ cups buttermilk
1 Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and butter an 8 3 4-inch baking pan.
2 In a large bowl, stir together the flours, germ, bran, salt, and soda. Using your fingers, rub in the butter till the mixture forms coarse crumbs.
3 Beat the egg into the buttermilk. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the buttermilk mixture. Stir to combine, then turn the batter into the prepared loaf pan.
4 Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the surface is crusty and cracked, or until a tester inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs clinging to it.
5 Cool completely in the pan before removing.
Bread racks outside a bakery in Bantry, Co. Cork
Be sure to buy stone-ground wheat flour for the best texture. The added wheat bran and germ will achieve the true, moist nutty, flavor of real Irish soda bread, but it also helps to use un-iodized salt for best flavor. (If using kosher salt, add an extra 1/2 teaspoon.)
Wrapping the bread in a towel to cool makes the loaf more manageable by softening the very crunchy exterior. The towel traps the steam as the bread cools and prevents the crust from getting too hard—and prevents the loaf from drying out.
Soda bread is not meant to last to a second day, but if you do have leftovers, wrap them tightly in plastic and toast slices before serving.
THE BASTIBLE
My father had an uncle, Uncle Barney, who was a bachelor farmer all his days. He lived alone in a thatched cottage on the Ratoath road in County Meath, a place that is now practically a freeway it’s so busy with commuters and the new housing developments of the boom years. But Barney was spared all that. He smoked a pipe incessantly by the time I knew him, and every other day, he baked himself a fresh cake of soda bread in his bastible. As I’ve mentioned, this once-indispensable implement in any Irish cottage is a large, lidded, cast-iron pot standing securely on three short legs. Barney would stand the bastible in the burning embers of his turf fire, slap the cake of bread in the bottom, put on the lid, and shovel some of the glowing chunks of turf on top of the lid. Less than an hour later, he’d draw it out of the fire and take off the lid to reveal perfectly baked bread.
A true white soda, unlike a scone enriched with butter and sometimes egg, doesn’t have much in it, and so our white soda tends to be sort of bland. Like everyone else, I nearly always prefer brown soda bread, because it’s full of so much more flavor (and that’s why you get it, with butter, accompanying nearly everything you order in a restaurant). White soda is more cake-like in texture. If it has raisins and a little sugar in it, it becomes a “fruit soda,” and it’s a little moister and more enticing.
I have noticed the soda breads made by the American-Irish are a very different product from white soda bread in Ireland. They often have caraway seeds, something you never see in Irish soda bread (although you do see them in Seedcake, p. 000) and they’re enriched with all sorts of goodies, including orange zest and eggs and butter. I suspect the Irish immigrants of long ago got to this land of plenty and thought, Why are we eating this dull, plain bread? And so they began to make additions, and I say their bread is all the better for it! Here’s a plain white soda, however, the classic version, and even I have to admit that buttered white soda is good with a cup of tea or a bowl of soup, and it’s a nice accompaniment to a fry-up.
Makes 1 medium loaf, 6 to 8 servings
3½ cups all-purpose flour
2 to 3 tablespoons sugar
1½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1½ to 1¾ cups buttermilk
1 Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
2 In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda.
3 Stir in enough buttermilk to make a stiff dough.
4 Lightly flour a rimless baking sheet and turn out the dough onto it. Shape it into a large round. Lift it onto a baking sheet and slash the surface with a sharp knife to make an X about an inch deep across the entire surface.
5 Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until golden and crusty. A tester should have only a few crumbs clinging to it, and the bread should sound hollow when the bottom is tapped. (If it doesn’t, remove it from the baking sheet and turn it upside down directly on the oven rack and bake for 5 to 10 minutes more.) Remove from the oven and wrap it in a clean tea towel and leave it, wrapped, to cool on a wire rack. (Wrapping it traps some of the escaping steam and keeps the exterior from being unpalatably hard.)
Barmbracks fall somewhere between a cake and a bread, doughy and yeast-raised but slightly sweet and spicy and enriched with butter, sugar, and eggs—almost like an Irish brioche. If you want to do this the traditional way, wrap a shiny new coin and a (toy) ring in a bit of parchment, and bury the coin and ring inside each round of dough before you place them in the cake pans for the final rise. Whoever gets the ring in his or her slice is supposed to marry in the coming year, and whoever gets the coin will have luck, or wealth, or what have you. Just don’t forget to tell your guests there’s a treasure hidden inside. Irish people expect not to bite down too hard on a piece of brack before gingerly feeling it for coins, but Americans may be very surprised indeed! Soaking the fruit in tea and whiskey adds flavor and an authentic edge to this very elegant fall dessert. Colcannon and brack are both autumnal foods, and they are a given for supper on Halloween night. Serve the brack sliced and thickly buttered, with a mug of milky tea.
Makes 2 8-inch bracks, about 24 servings For the fruit:
1½ cups strong brewed tea
¼ cup Irish whiskey
1½ cups raisins
½ cup golden raisins
¾ cup mixed candied peel
For the yeast:
1¼ cups whole milk
1 package double-acting active dry yeast (2 teaspoons)
1 tablespoon sugar
1½ cups all-purpose flour
For the brack:
½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Mixed Spice (see p. 196)
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Put the tea and the whiskey in a medium bowl and stir in the raisins, golden raisins, and candied peel. Cover the bowl and set aside to soak for about an hour.
2 Heat the milk in a medium bowl in the microwave (or in a small saucepan on the stovetop) until it’s just warm enough to hold your finger in it without getting burned, about 115 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer. (If you overheat, let it cool back down, checking it several times with the thermometer. Milk hotter than 115 degrees F will kill the yeast.) Stir in the sugar, then sprinkle the yeast over the surface, letting it sink in and dissolve. Whisk gently with a fork. It’s okay if there are small lumps of yeast. Stir in the flour to make a soft dough, cover the bowl, and set aside for 30 minutes, until doubled in size.
3 When ready to mix, fit a standing mixer with a dough hook and put in the butter, sugar, mixed spice, and salt. Beat it at low speed until creamy. Beat in the eggs and then slowly add the flour to make a smooth dough. On low speed, blend in the milk and yeast mixture, and knead at medium speed for 6 to 7 minutes to make a smooth, elastic dough. (If mixing and kneading by hand, turn the dough out onto a flour surface, knead for 5 minutes, then let the dough rest for 15 minutes. Knead again for 5 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.)
4 Lift out the dough, put a little oil in the bottom of the bowl, and turn the dough to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and let the bowl stand in a draft-free place for 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in size. While the dough is rising, drain the fruit and peel and spread it on a double thickness of paper towels to dry for a while.
5 When the dough has doubled, turn it onto a lightly floured surface and pat it into a large rectangle. Spread the fruit over the dough and then fold it three ways, like a letter. Turn it 90 degrees, pat into a rectangle, and fold like a letter again. Repeat 2 or 3 more times, until the fruit is worked evenly through the dough. Return to the bowl, cover, and leave for half an hour.
6 Grease two 8-inch cake pans and line them with a circle of parchment or foil. Butter the parchment as well. Divide the dough in two and fold each piece like a letter one more time, pressing them down into the pans with the fold downward and the smooth “back” of the letter on top. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for an hour.
7 Half an hour after the dough starts this final rise, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake the risen pans for 45 to 50 minutes, until puffed and golden brown. The barmbracks are finished when a tester inserted in the center emerges clean. Cool for 15 minutes in the cake pans, then turn out and cool completely, right side up, on racks. To cut, slice each brack in half across the center, then turn each half, cut side down, and slice each half into 12 pieces.
MIXED SPICE
In the same way most Americans have “chili powder” in their cabinets (in Ireland, chile powder is merely ground chiles, not a blend meant for chili con carne), most Irish people have a container of “mixed spice” in theirs. It’s a blend of warm spices and it’s used so often in baking that most Irish recipes, such as for Christmas cake or pudding, merely call for such-and-such amount “mixed spice.” It’s kind of like Apple Pie Spice, but the blend is different, with a dominant scent of nutmeg and cloves. Here’s how to make your own blend of mixed spice, to have on hand for baking:
Makes 2 tablespoons
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground allspice
Blend in a small jar and store tightly closed.
Easter is a big deal in Ireland and I like the way the holiday is used to mark time. “Please God, you’ll be back with us at Easter,” a parent might say to a visiting adult child at Christmas. By Easter, it is deep into spring and the country is in full bloom. Lambs are bouncing about the countryside, tulips are bursting forth, and cherry trees are in blossom. No wonder we take our hot cross buns so seriously and eat them throughout the season! They are part of the package that says life has returned and it’ll be summer before long.
Makes 1 dozen
1 cup whole milk
½ cup (1 stick) butter
½ cup sugar
1 package active dry yeast (2 teaspoons) 4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons Mixed Spice
¼ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup fresh, soft raisins (if yours are old and dry, buy a new box)
¼ cup candied peel, chopped
For the glaze:
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
For the cross:
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup water
2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 Heat the milk and butter in the microwave or on the stovetop just until the butter melts and the milk is handhot—so it feels hot but doesn’t burn your finger to dip it in the milk. Check with an instant-read thermometer that it’s no hotter than 115 degrees F; if so, let it cool because hotter milk will kill the yeast. Stir the sugar into the milk, sprinkle the yeast over all, and whisk with a fork to dissolve the yeast. Allow to sit for 10 minutes until foamy.
2 While the yeast foams, put the flour, mixed spice, and salt in a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. With the mixer on low, slowly pour in the yeast and milk mixture. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until combined. Add the raisins and mixed peel, stirring to combine.
3 With the mixer on medium, knead for 4 to 5, minutes until the dough is smooth and shiny, and the fruit is distributed throughout the dough. Lift the dough out of the mixer bowl, pour a little oil in the bottom, and turn the dough to coat in the oil. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside in a draft-free place to rise until doubled in size.
4 On a lightly floured surface, divide the dough into 12 even balls. Turn each ball inside out, leaving the stretched part as the new exterior and pinching the bottoms together like a balloon. Set the pinched side down on a large rimless baking sheet. Continue with all the dough. Cover loosely with a large sheet of plastic wrap and set aside in a draft-free place to rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.
5 Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Beat the egg with 1 tablespoon water to make a glaze. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, water, confectioners’ sugar, and melted butter. Brush the egg glaze on the raised buns. If you don’t have a piping bag with a plain tip, put the flour and water mixture into a ziplock bag, seal it, and cut a tiny tip off one bottom corner. (Make a small cut first; you can always enlarge it.) Pipe a generous cross about 1/2-inch wide over the entire top of each bun, dividing each bun into four quarters.
6 Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until puffed and golden. Cool on a rack until barely warm.
Much gingerbread is so mild-flavored and neutral that there may as well not be any ginger in it. This recipe calls for a generous two tablespoons which makes gingerbread with a real spicy kick to it. There’s so much warm spice in this recipe—cloves, cinnamon, cardamom— this is one recipe that will in fact taste much better the next day when the gingerbread is cool and the flavors have had time to meld and bloom. I like to bake it in a loaf pan and serve it cut into thick, moist slices. Try sandwiching two slices with a little cream cheese and thinly sliced tart apple for an unconventional but excellent lunch. You can also bake it in a buttered 9 3 9-inch pan; just reduce the baking time to 20 to 25 minutes.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
1½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup dark brown sugar
1 cup molasses
2 eggs
½ cup buttermilk
1 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and lightly butter a 9-inch loaf tin. Put the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk to combine.
2 Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy using an electric mixer, then add the eggs and molasses. Mix to combine, then stir in the buttermilk. The mixture will appear loose and not emulsified. That’s okay.
3 Add the dry ingredients and stir until no flour streaks show. Turn the batter into the prepared pan and bake 40 to 50 minutes, until a tester inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs clinging to it. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then remove the gingerbread from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack.
On first glance, these plain little cakes might seem to be so ordinary they’re hardly worth bothering with. But their utter simplicity—the mild oat flavor and the nubbly texture of the rolled oats—is what makes them so addictively good with cheese. I like them best of all with a high-quality sharp cheddar, the kind with the classic fudgy, crumbly texture, but they’re an ideal cheese biscuit, ready to accompany whatever cheese you’re eating. You can buy readymade oatcakes good and bad at any Irish supermarket, but the freshness and crunch of the home-baked version is unparalleled.
Makes 4 servings
¼ cup water
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick oats), plus more for rolling
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and lightly grease a rimless baking sheet. Put the water and butter in a small saucepan (or in a bowl in the microwave) and heat just until the butter melts completely. Remove from the heat.
2 Stir together the oats, flour, salt, and soda into a medium bowl. Stir in the water and butter to make a stiff dough.
3 Scatter additional oatmeal on a clean work surface and turn the dough out onto it. Knead lightly one or two times, then divide the dough in two. Scattering more oatmeal as needed to prevent sticking, pat each piece into a circle 1/4-inch thick. Cut each circle into four quarters, and use a spatula to lift them onto the prepared baking sheet.
4 Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the oatcakes are just turning golden around the edges but are not browned. Cool on a rack before serving.
