Split Screen
  • The Best Of Us
  • Words
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Infographics
  • About
  • Bonus Round
    • Cast Iron
    • Five out of Ten
Recent Posts
  • Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
  • Dwarf Fortress
  • Alan’s Favourite Music of 2022
  • Cast Iron: Dio – Holy Diver
  • Cast Iron: Killswitch Engage – Disarm the Descent
Tags
A Double Fine Trilogy Adventure Games Alans-music-roundups Assassin's Creed Books Call of Duty cast-iron Christmas Dead _______ Fable Fallout Five out of Ten Football Manager Diaries Forza Games I've Made iPads and iPhones Killing ______ Never Gets Old left 4 dead Let’s Play Life Mass Effect Meta MetaCritique Metal Gear Solid Movies & TV Music Nintendo Operating Systems Passwords and Security Pile of Shame Podcasts Prince of Persia Random Record Review Reality Check Retrocity Scribblenauts Sea of Thieves Shmups Skyrim Sonic the Hedgehog Telltale Games The Best of Us The Screenies Award Show World of Warcraft ______ Versus ______
Split Screen
Split Screen
  • The Best Of Us
  • Words
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Infographics
  • About
  • Bonus Round
    • Cast Iron
    • Five out of Ten

Daily Bread

  • Alan
  • 7 September 2015

Wheaten bread – ‘Irish soda bread’ for readers outside Norn Iron – has a special place in the pantheon of Irish breads. Soda bread and potato bread are integral to the Ulster Fry; barmbrack and fruit loaf are sweet and sticky teatime companions; Veda is this strange malted loaf lurking in bread bins around the province, begging to be toasted. But wheaten is my favourite: a bread of real character, a centrepiece rather than a side dish, as essential as the soup or cheese next to it. It must be nutty and flavoursome to hold its own against the tangy cheddar, moist enough to linger in the mouth without sticking to it. Wheaten bread has a presence. Eating it should be a respectful ritual.

My housemate bought a loaf of Paul Rankin supermarket wheaten to accompany soup, but it was offensively bad: a dry, bland substitute for the taste of home. The Rankin bread wasn’t just a rank loaf: it was baking blasphemy. So I searched for a recipe: real wheaten, not some adulterated American junk filled in seeds, honey and god knows what else. Some recipes benefit from innovation, but others call for tradition.

I weighed the dry ingredients into a bowl, rubbing butter into them until they resembled fine breadcrumbs. After adding buttermilk, I kneaded the dough on the kitchen counter, driving my knuckles into it. It was relaxing, almost meditative. Once it felt consistently strong and sticky, I shaped it into a round and dropped it into a floured cake tin, slashing a cross into the top to form the four farls, sprinkling with rolled oats.

After waiting for half an hour in nostril-teasing agony, the bread was ready. It lasted five minutes cooling, both of us on different racks of a sort. I cracked into it with a knife, cut the loaf clean in two between the farls that were now small peaks of crust, and watched the steam drift out for a little while. It was beautifully moist inside, dense and perfect. It took me back to the wheaten from afternoon tea in my granny’s sitting room, piled high on a tray, spread thick with butter and jam.

Butter couldn’t wait to slide off the knife and soak into the bread, followed by a thin layer of jam – anything beyond that would have been sacrilegious, would have spoiled the sanctity of the culinary pilgrimage.

I enjoyed my daily bread for the rest of the week; the trespasses of the supermarket loaf were forgiven.

Tags
  • Life
Alan

The Northern Irish one. Sonic the Hedgehog apologist.

Posts You May Enjoy
Read

Something Out of Nothing

  • Alan
  • 8 May 2020
Read

Spyro

  • Alan
  • 6 April 2020
Read

(And Yet More Mistakes I Make)

  • Craig
  • 23 December 2019
Read

On The Origins of Buddy Sideshow

  • Craig
  • 29 March 2019
Split Screen
By Alan Williamson and Craig Wilson.

Input your search keywords and press Enter.