Food

Irish Brown Bread

When you think of Irish Soda Bread (outside Ireland), a white round loaf comes to mind. In Ireland, however, the most commonly made soda bread is a wholemeal loaf. If an Irish person asks if you’d like some brown bread, this is almost certainly what they mean.

Traditionally, it’s a round loaf cross-quartered but more and more often, you’ll find it in a rectangular loaf shape. Probably because a round loaf leaves four heels/crusts/loaf ends and the days of “eat your crusts if you want your hair curly” are long gone. (I know no one in my family likes eating the ends.)

Varieties

There are probably as many recipes for brown bread as there are homes in Ireland. Variations include eggs, oats, honey or brown sugar, butter or cooking oil, even Guinness! What it absolutely has to have is:

wholemeal / wheatmeal flour
plain/all-purpose flour
baking soda /bicarbonate of soda
buttermilk
a pinch of salt

Otherwise, it’s something else and not authentic.

The recipe below is from my daughter’s high school cookbook. It should keep for at least four days at a cooler room temperature or you can slice then freeze. (Don’t freeze then try to slice—it’s like trying to slice a brick.)

Ingredients

350g (12 oz) wholemeal flour
50g (1 and 3/4 oz) Plain/ All-purpose flour
1 tablespoon of wheatgerm / rolled oats / flaxseeds
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon brown sugar or honey
1 teaspoon of bicarb. of soda (baking soda)
350ml (1 and 1/2 cups) buttermilk
2 tablespoons of sunflower oil
1 egg

Buttermilk Alternative

In Ireland, buttermilk is now sold as a cultured milk product. In days gone by, it would have been the milk (whey) left over from making butter. The commercial stuff is like a runny yogurt. The original is a blue-white colour, very similar to skim milk but sharper in flavour.

You could thin some plain or Greek yogurt with milk to make an equivalent. Alternatively, take about 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice and add milk until the total makes about 250mL (1 cup). Leave it to stand for five minutes. It will curdle and look gross, but it cooks perfectly well!

Serving

Most people would eat a slice of brown bread spread with butter and jam (jelly) as a snack. In restaurants and pubs, brown bread and butter are the usual accompaniment to soup. Another traditional approach is to serve it with butter and smoked salmon.

After a big night out, however, many an Irish person would fry a few slices of brown bread in a pan with some vegetable oil. Fried bread has what they call “great soakage.” (I.e. it can delay the effects of a hangover by soaking up the excess alcohol!)

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F (drop 20 degrees if fan-forced)
Choose your pan. This may be a 1 kg / 2 pound loaf tin or a 9-inch round cake tin. Line your loaf tin with baking paper OR pop your cake tin into the oven to warm before use.*
Put all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. (Make sure you have no lumps in your baking soda!)
In a jug, whisk the buttermilk, oil and egg until combined.
Add the contents of the jug slowly to the dry ingredients and stir to form a wet mixture. This should make a sticky dough. You may not need all the liquid.
Dust a work surface with extra plain/all-purpose flour. Scrape out all the dough onto the work surface. Shape it to form a log or a ball, depending on your tin.
- If you’re using a round cake tin without a liner, take it carefully out the oven now. Add a dusting of plain flour on the bottom to prevent the bread sticking.
Put the dough into the tin and press lightly down so that it meets all sides and has an even surface.
- If going for a traditional round loaf, cut a cross about 1cm or 1/4 inch deep now. *
Bake for 45 minutes to one hour.
- The loaf is cooked when a skewer comes out clean.
- Alternatively, you can tip the bread upside down onto a counter and give it a tap. If it sounds hollow, it’s down.*
- If it needs more time check every 5-10 minutes.
When cooked, you have two options.
1. Hard crust on top: leave to cook for five minutes then turn it onto a wire rack to cool.
2. Soft crust: Straight away, tip onto a tea towel. Wrap the tea towel around the loaf and leave it to cool upside-down.

* If you’d like to watch an expert make this from scratch, this clip features an Irish gran with a lovely accent talking you through the process in about five minutes on a local breakfast tv show.

Sourdough

Food Ancient Egypt, ancient rome, medieval, recipe, sourdough

Ancient Bread

Recently a man by the name of Seamus Blackley baked a loaf of sourdough using 4,500-year-old yeast scraped from the sides of ancient Egyptian pottery. As astonishing as this is, it’s almost as astonishing as the fact he then ate the bread. Let’s just say he’s braver than me!

Leavened bread – or bread raised with yeast – has a long and venerable history. It’s alleged to have begun with the Egyptians then spread to the Greeks and Romans. The Romans, in turn, are credited with bringing wheat, oats and rye to Britain. (Barley, however, is native to both Britain and Ireland.)

Across Europe in the Middle Ages, white bread was a status symbol – if you were poor, you were more likely to need to mix grains. Large baking ovens were either communal or owned by a local lord. How then, did people bake a daily loaf at home in more rural environments?

Clay Ovens

While pottage (a kind of porridge made with whatever grain was on hand) was common and easily made in a cauldron, a pot with a lid could also act as an oven. Indeed, we tend to call these Dutch Ovens today. They could be made of cast iron or pottery – the latter the easiest to come by.

I have a replica model made by Romertopf. This translates from German as ‘Rome Pot’ and, yes, the design does go back to ancient Rome. Using this along with an electric oven, I make my own sourdough according to the No-Knead method espoused by New York baker Jim Lahey.

Sourdough No-knead Bread

A sourdough can be started with wild yeasts in the air or bought yeast that is then regularly fed. I studied how to make sourdough under the expertise of Yoke Mardewi of Wild Sourdough. Following her recommendation, I use a rye starter because it is less hungry than a wheat one (i.e. it needs less feeding) and is generally more forgiving. I keep mine in a Kilner jar in the fridge.

The recipe I use, however, for my everyday sourdough loaf comes from Sam Sifton from the New York Times… with a few variations.

Dough Mix

Ingredients

3.5 cups or 425g strong flour

1tsp or 5g of sea salt

0.75 cup or 180g of rye starter

About 1.25c or 300g lukewarm water

After First Rise

Ingredients

3.5 cups or 425g strong flour

1tsp or 5g of sea salt

0.75 cup or 180g of rye starter

Sourdough No-knead Bread Recipe

Step 1.
In a large mixing bowl combine flour, salt, water and starter until just combined. Cover with either plastic wrap or a damp teatowel. (My bowl has a lid.) Let it rise overnight.

Step 2.
Soak your Romertopf in water or have a cold cast iron pot handy.

You’ll need up to a cup more flour, maybe more. On a clean surface, spread at a good portion of flour. Tip your sticky, gooey dough onto the surface. Knead and keep adding flour until it’s smooth and a lot less sticky. (Yes SOME kneading required, but it’s not much compared to normal bread.)

Step 3.
Grease and flour your pot. Form a ball with your dough and put it in seam-side down. Cover and let rise for a minimum of two hours. (I let mine rise with my terracotta pot in a basin of warm water.) Score the top of your loaf.

Step 4.
Put your loaf into a COLD oven if you’re using a Romertopf. Then crank your oven to the top, baby. We’re talking 220 C fan-forced or 450 F. (If you’re using cast iron, then follow Sam’s baking advice here.)

Step 5.
Bake for 35 minutes then take off the lid and bake for a further 10-20 minutes. Basically until you have a lovely brown crust. Turn out onto a rack and let it cool for at least 30 minutes before eating.

The Final Loaf

Call me Calendula

Food, Foraging, Medicine, medieval balm, calendula, enfleurage, essential oils, marigold, salve

My very first attempt at making an ointment was with marigolds – more properly known as Calendula Officinalis. Calendula has a mighty reputation as a healing herb, especially for skin complaints.

In my Encyclopedia of Herbs by the Royal Horticultural Society (no less), it states that calendula is used medicinally for the following external purposes:

eczema
conjunctivitis
thrush
herpes (I presume, cold sores)
athlete’s foot
varicose veins
minor injuries, and
‘skin problems.’

Quite the list. Pharmacology studies seem to support these traditional uses, with marigolds noted as having: anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties. When macerated in methanol it’s antibacterial; in ethanol (alchohol) it’s antifungal AND antibacterial.

Nicolas Culpeper, the famous sixteenth century herbalist, labelled it the ‘herb of the Sun’ and had this to say:

The juice of Marigold leaves mixed with vinegar, and any hot swelling bathed with it, instantly gives ease, and assuages it. The flowers, either green or dried, are much used in possets, broths, and drink, as a comforter of the heart and spirits, and to expel any malignant or pestilential quality which might annoy them.

Food

It may benefit a range of internal illnesses but isn’t recommended for anyone who’s pregnant. That said, it’s widely used in foods as a colouring alternative to saffron. It gives a lovely golden hue to dairy foods, rice and cakes. (Indeed, it’s also used as a textile dye.)

The petals also had a wonderful splash of colour to salads. They can also be used to brew a tea with a particular reputation for treating sore throats.

Origins

A number of sources claim marigolds are originally from Mexico, brought to Europe by the Spanish. This doesn’t tally with references to marigolds in Pliny (under the name of Calta) and Virgil in his Natural History.

After a bit of further research, I uncovered the source of the confusion: two different species!

The European is Calendula Officinalis – often called pot marigolds. The Aztec marigold, however, is Tagetes Erecta. There are several tagetes species – all from the New World. These also have medicinal properties but are quite different to the calendula species and care should be taken not to mix these up.

To be strictly accurate, tagetes are now what people tend to think of as marigolds. Although the Encyclopaedia of Essential Oils by Julia Lawless is adamant that the ‘true’ marigolds are calendula.

Calendula Cream

Salve

Calendula Cream is widely available in health stores. There are also plenty of recipes to make your own online. Whipping the recipe below with a stick blender will turn the salve into more of a cream.

My research, however, was to look at what might have gone into a medieval calendula salve for a herbalist in southern France.

For her, the key ingredients would be:

dried calendula petals (totally dry)
beeswax
olive oil and/or almond oil (the latter is ‘sweeter’ in scent but tends to go rancid in warmer weather)
essential oils for scent*

Method:

Infuse the dried petal in oil/s until completely submerged. Cover and steep for a few weeks in a warm place, then strain.
Add beeswax to the oils and heat gently (over a double-boiler is best) until the beeswax is fully melted. Stir to combine.
Remove from heat and add the essential oil. Pour into a pot. Cool before use.

*The first use of steam distillation to produce essential oils is attributed to Ibn Sina (westernised as Avicenna) in Persia around AD 1000. When Crusaders returned home, scents such as rosewater came with them. The earliest recorded details distillation methods for perfume, however, was by Ibn al-Baitar (1188–1248) in Al-Andalusia.

So, adding an essential oil as we know it is out for my heroine. More likely, she would take something such as lavender or frankincense and use a vegetable oil (as above) to create a perfume. This process is called ‘enfleurage.’