Bread & Cakes

One of the great traditions of Irish cooking is the excellence of our home-made bread. Soda bread and brown bread are still considered to be the best kinds of bread in the world. Usually eaten at tea time in Ireland, bread always contained fresh buttermilk but a lot of baking is done today with sour milk instead.

Soda Bread

1 oz butter
1 lb flour
1 heaped teaspoon salt
1/3 pint buttermilk
1 heaped teaspoon baking soda
Rub the butter into the flour. Add salt and soda and mix well together using your fingers! Add buttermilk and stir into dough with a wooden spoon. With floured hands knead lightly into a ball and turn out onto a lightly floured baking shet. Flatten dough into a circle about 1 1/2 inches thick with the palm of your hand. Make a cross in the centre with a floured knife and bake at 425F for 30 to 35 minutes

Barmbrack

Perhaps the most distinctive Irish cake is the barmbrack. It comes from the Gaelic 'barm breac' (meaning the speckled bread). On Hallowe'en the barmbrack is baked with a wedding ring wrapped in paper and mixed into the dough. Traditionally, if your slice of the barmbrack contained the wedding ring, you would be engaged before the year was out!
1 lb flour
1/2 grated nutmeg
Pinch of salt
2 oz butter
3/4 oz dried yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
2 well beaten eggs
1/2 oz sultanas
1/2 lbs currants
4 oz chopped candied peel
1/2 pint of milk
Sift the flour, nutmeg and salt together and rub butter into flour. Cream the yeast in a cup with a teaspoon of sugar. Add the rest of the sugar to the flour mixture and mix well. Warm the milk slightly and add to the yeast and most of the beaten eggs. Add liquid to the dry ingredients and beat well until batter is stiff. Fold in currants, raisins and peel. Put into a greased 8 inch cake tin so that the mixture only half fills the tin. Cover with a cloth and leave to rise in a warm place until mixture has doubled in size (about 1 hour). Brush top of the dough with a little beaten egg to give a glaze and bake at 400F for approx. 1 hour (stick a knife or skewer in the centre and if it comes out clean, then its done!).
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