A hearty Irish bread absolutely anyone can make
The first time I had brown bread from Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork, Ireland, was at a welcome lunch for students.
The menu was simple: Loaves of the bread accompanied poached Poole prawns from Ballycotton Bay, a 15-minute walk from the farm where the school sits. Darina Allen, the school’s co-founder, buzzed around the room, encouraging us to spread thick slices of the bread with mayonnaise or butter, and pile on the tiny prawns. The quiet luxury of all of it was heady, but it was the plain brown loaf — nutty, barely sweet and still warm — that felt most special.
“This recipe takes the time and mystery out of yeast breadmaking,” Allen said. “It’s a gift for life.” She mixed yeast with warm water and some treacle syrup, let it foam, then stirred the mixture into whole-wheat flour, gave it a quick rise, and baked.
An adaptation of the Grant loaf, which Doris Grant, a nutritionist, created during World War II to make easy use of rations, the loaf was less fluffy than sandwich bread and less cakey than soda bread, with none of the chew of sourdough, and though it looked similar enough to Danish rugbrod, it was neither dense nor sour.
In time, Grant’s recipe made its way to Ireland and into the hands of Myrtle Allen, Darina’s mother-in-law and the chef of Ballymaloe House, an inn and restaurant. Myrtle Allen died in 2018, but the Ballymaloe kitchens continue to turn out 20 loaves of this bread each day, as it has for the past 40 years.
“Unlike an Irish soda bread, which is all about the handling, this one has no tricks or secrets,” said JR Ryall, a pastry chef at Ballymaloe for two decades. “It’s a simple process that makes something wonderful to eat.”
Students at the cooking school and guests at Ballymaloe House have taken the recipe home and now bake it all over the world. Lily Starbuck, a former student, sells it at her cafe, the West End, on Fishers Island, New York. This summer, she plans to teach a cooking class with Ballymaloe brown bread as the first lesson: “I do not fear a drop in sales once people see how easy it can be,” she said. “I instead see that as a victory in getting people back in the kitchen and nourishing themselves.”
The version here makes a perfect loaf of bread in less than two hours. With its singularly low skill-to-outcome ratio, it has, for decades, broken through the baker-ornonbaker divide.
Ballymaloe now makes this loaf with wheat grown on the farm, and Allen accompanies it with homemade butter and Camembert.
“I don’t need a Prada handbag,” she said. “For me, this is real luxury.”
Brown Bread
This simple whole-wheat loaf requires no kneading, shaping or baking experience to get it right. You can begin the recipe when you wake up, and enjoy a warm loaf for breakfast a few hours later. Make sure that your yeast foams in the molasses-water before you stir it into the flour. If it does nothing, the yeast is probably dead — discard it and save this recipe for another day. If you like seedy bread, include some (sunflower, poppy, sesame or a combination) in the dough, and sprinkle some on top of the loaf before letting it rise. No adjustments are needed if you decide to include them. While most bread recipes advise you to wait until the loaf cools completely before slicing, this one is best still warm, with butter — Irish, preferably! — Recipe from Darina Allen, Ballymaloe House and Ireland, adapted by Clare de Boer Yield: 1loaf. Total time: 1hour 40minutes.
INGREDIENTS
4cups/450grams wholewheat flour, preferably stoneground
1teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) or 1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt 1tablespoon molasses or treacle
21/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1teaspoon canola or other flavorless oil, for greasing 1tablespoon sesame or poppy seeds or a combination (optional)
DIRECTIONS
1. In a large bowl, mix the flour with the salt.
2. In a liquid measuring jug or small bowl, mix the molasses with 5fluid ounces/150 milliliters of lukewarm water. Stir in the yeast and leave the jug somewhere warm for 5minutes, or until the liquid develops a creamy froth.
3. Meanwhile, grease a 5- by 8-inch loaf pan with the oil and line the bottom and long sides with parchment paper to create a sling for the bread.
4. Pour the activated yeast mixture into the flour. Measure 10fluid ounces/275 milliliters of tepid water into the jug, scraping and stirring any residual yeast into the water. Pour this into the flour.
5. Using your hand or a spoon, mix the flour and the liquid together to make a dough. It’ll be too wet to knead. Scrape the dough into the prepared loaf pan. If you’d like, sprinkle the top with sesame or poppy seeds or both.
6. Place the pan in a warm place (close to the stove is ideal). Pull a dish cloth tight over the top of the pan without letting it touch the dough, and leave the dough to rise until it reaches the top of the pan, 15 to 25 minutes. While the dough rises, heat the oven with a rack in the center to 450 degrees.
7. When the dough has nearly reached the top of the pan, remove the dish cloth and put the loaf on the center rack in the oven.
8. Bake for 20minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 400degrees. Continue to bake for another 30minutes or until the top looks nicely browned.
9. Remove the pan from the oven, then tip the loaf out of the pan, running a knife around the outside of the bread to release it if needed and holding the hot loaf with oven mitts or a clean dish towel. Discard the parchment paper, shake off loose seeds, and return the loaf — upside down — to the oven, setting it directly on the center rack. Bake for another 10minutes, or until the loaf sounds hollow when you tap its bottom.
10. Cool the loaf on a rack for 10minutes before slicing to enjoy warm. The loaf will keep well-wrapped at room temperature for up to 3 days.