The Great Irish Bake Off A return to family roots and easy home baking. W OR D S + PHO T OGR A PH Y
Cinda Chavich Irish Tray Bakes – lit tle squares of layered chocolate and creamy g reen mint f illing.
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akers: On your mark, get set, bake!” And so my weekly, vicarious baking fix begins— channelling my great, great Irish grandfather, a baker, through the trials of home bakers compet-
ing on British (and now Canadian) TV shows. I’m an accomplished cook, but I must have missed out on that baking gene. Luckily there are several great artisan bakers here in Victoria, and a perfect baguette, a loaf of chewy sourdough, or a flaky croissant is always close at hand. But today I’m in Bronagh Duffin’s colourful kitchen, in her little cooking school on the edge of Lough Neah in Northern Ireland, and we’re making that simple Irish staple, soda bread. It’s her granny’s recipe—just four ingredients and so quick and easy to make, it’s literally child’s play, and one of the breads Duffin teaches both kids and adults to bake. We dump the flour into a bowl with the baking soda and salt, then add just enough buttermilk to create a soft dough that’s formed into a round loaf. It’s set on a baking sheet and scored into quarters—just partway through “to let the fairies out”—then baked. Thirty minutes later we’re tearing into a warm, golden loaf, as simple and satisfying today as it was when baked on a griddle over an open fire in centuries past. In Northern Ireland, says Duffin, home baking is a tradition that has offered comfort to many through troubled times. “Growing up in the 1980s, with The Troubles, life was quite
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difficult,” she says, recalling Northern Ireland’s long civil
basket at the excellent James Street South restaurant
war. “Food was a healing thing—it offered some comfort and
in Belfast. I didn’t get a chance to meet the legendary
brought people together.”
chef Niall McKenna, but he also has a cookery school
Now Ireland has peace, but fresh bread—from flat, griddled potato bread and malty, rustic wheaten to massive baps and
at James Street South and is generous with his recipes (see eatmagazine.ca for recipes).
sourdough to slather in good Irish butter—is something I
“There is nothing like breadmaking to take the stress out of
encounter with nearly every meal in my travels through
the daily grind, and our bread class at the cookery school is
Belfast and up along the rugged northern coast.
one of the most popular on the schedule,” McKenna wrote
Farls, Potato Bread and Baps St. George’s Market in Belfast is the place to head for breakfast and the famous Belfast Bap. The bap itself is a big, dense, bulbous bun—originally created to feed a hungry populous in the 19th century—and today quelling hunger is a given, the bread split, toasted, and piled high with Irish bacon and sausage, then crowned with a fried organic egg. A long queue snakes beyond the griddle at The Belfast Bap Company market stall, where each giant breakfast sandwich is cooked to order. Said to be the classic hangover cure, the Belfast Bap is a Sunday tradition. But there are other fresh, local breads on offer at this historic food market, where tables are piled with sweet and savoury cheese scones, boxy loaves of dark wheaten bread, and triangular potato breads and soda farls, thick griddle breads to split and serve with famous Irish cheese. Even the iconic dark Irish stout, Guinness, makes an appearance in simple soda breads. I’m smitten by the little individual muffins of Guinness Wheaten in the bread The Belfas t Bap Company market s tall