Breaking Bread

This year my family and I are joining friends in my building for a Friendsgiving style Thanksgiving Day dinner. We are a small but mighty immediate family in the US, and joining others to set a full Thanksgiving table brings back memories of Thanksgivings past. As we determined the menu for the pot luck dinner, I signed on for bringing or baking bread.

My main goal is to bring freshly baked bread, but without a strong sourdough starter, my options are to either to use a dry yeast recipe or bake a bread requiring no yeast. My favorite no rise bread, and I believe my favorite bread, is Irish brown bread. I have eaten a lot of Irish brown bread — A LOT — to a point where I would put big money on me winning a brown bread eating contest. However, in all these years of eating, I never baked brown bread. I needed to find a recipe.

For those not familiar with Irish brown bread, I hope you have the life experience of eating brown bread with Kerry Gold butter or smoked salmon (or both!) in Ireland. It is a daily staple at the table and may be eaten simply with butter and a cup of tea, or paired with a lovely soup. Irish brown bread tends to disappear as quickly as it is placed at the table.

I chose a recipe from Taste. I did need to make a few modifications, including increasing the buttermilk and butter which I have updated below.

Recipe

2½ cups stone ground whole wheat flour

1½ cups fine whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 pinch of kosher or fine sea salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

5 tablespoons salted butter

20 ounces buttermilk

1 large egg

1. Set oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

1. Melt the butter and combine with the buttermilk in a separate bowl.
2. Whisk the egg into the butter and buttermilk mixture.

1. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient and combine.
2. Put the dough in a parchment lined loaf pan.
3. Bake for 40 minutes.
4. Pull the bread with the parchment out of the pan, and set on a rake covered with a tea towel to cool.

The bread is delicious, kudos to Taste, but it isn’t quite the bread that I have gone crazy for since childhood. There are a few variations I will try before Thursday, including ones calling for molasses over brown sugar. Check my Instagram page for updates!

In reverence for the tradition kitchen, I give a loud universe shout out to my Uncle Michael who passed way too soon. If you have any doubts about the addictively deliciousness of Irish brown bread, you should know that he would bring frozen loaves in his luggage when visiting the US! (I see you nodding former New Yorkers who slice and freeze bagels before leaving home.)