What is in your picnic basket? If you’re looking to impress your fellow picnic-goers with homemade bread, Brenda Carden has perfected an Irish brown bread recipe for you. Ready to go into the oven in just minutes and suitably shaped for sandwiches, it’ll give you plenty of time to think of fillings.
Irish brown bread
Brenda Carden, 69, Dublin
I have been making the traditional Irish brown bread all my life. A couple of years ago I wanted to change the recipe so that it would be easier to make. I also wanted to bake it in the conventional loaf shape so I could use it for sandwiches more easily. I tried to change the recipe by leaving out different ingredients until I settled on this one. I do not like salt, so I left that out. It is made in five minutes with the minimum of fuss and little to wash up. Sometimes I eat it for breakfast with a boiled egg, or I spread marmalade on it. I have it for lunch with Marmite and tomatoes, or for special occasions with smoked salmon and dill.
Ingredients
680g wholemeal flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
¾ litre buttermilk
Butter for greasing
Method
1 Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6.
Advertisement
2 Melt some butter in a dish and, with a pastry brush, grease two 900g loaf tins. It is very important to get this right as overgreasing will ruin the bread and undergreasing will make it impossible to get the bread out of the tin.
3 Put the wholemeal flour into a bowl. Sieve the baking soda. Mix well.
4 Add the eggs, then the buttermilk by degrees. Mix until the dough flows from the wooden spoon and put into the tins and flatten.
5 It will take between 35 and 40 min to cook. Test with a skewer. After the bread is out of the oven, leave in the tins for 20 min. Take the bread out of the tins and let it rest on a wire rack.
Do you have a recipe you’ve created and are particularly proud of? To share your kitchen secrets, see the Readers’ recipes submission page here.
