| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 1 hr 15 min |
| Prep: | 15 min |
| Cook: | 1 hr |
| Yield: | 1 loaf |
Ingredients
- 16 ounces/4 cups (450 grams) strong (stone-ground) wholemeal flour OR
- 14 ounces/3 1/2 cups (400 grams) strong (stone-ground) wholemeal flour plus 2 ounces/1/2 cup (50 grams) strong white flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black treacle or molasses
- 3/4 ounce to 1 ounce (20 grams to 25 grams) fresh non-GM yeast
- 15 fluid ounces/ scant 2 cups (425 milliliters) water at blood heat plus 10 fluid ounces/1 1/4 cups (275 milliliters)
- Sunflower oil
- Sesame seeds, optional
Instructions
- When making Ballymaloe brown yeast bread, remember that yeast is a living organism. In order to grow, it requires warmth, moisture and nourishment. The yeast feeds on the sugar and produces bubbles of carbon dioxide which causes the bread to rise. Heat of over 122 degrees F/50 degrees C will kill yeast. Have the ingredients and equipment at blood heat. White or brown sugar, honey golden syrup, treacle or molasses may be used. Each will give a slightly different flavour to the bread. At Ballymaloe we use treacle. The dough rises more rapidly with 1 ounce (25 grams) yeast than with 3/4 ounce (20 grams) yeast.
- We use a stone ground wholemeal. Different flours produce breads of different textures and flavour. The amount of natural moisture in the flour varies according to atmospheric conditions. The quantity of water should be altered accordingly. The dough should be just too wet to knead – in fact it does not require kneading. The main ingredients – wholemeal flour, treacle and yeast are highly nutritious.
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F/230 degrees C/gas mark 8.
- Mix the flour with the salt. In a small bowl or mixing cup, mix the treacle with 15 fluid ounces/ scant 2 cups (425 milliliters) water and crumble in the yeast.
- Sit the bowl for a few minutes in a warm place to allow the yeast to start to work. Grease a 5 by 8-inch (13 by 20 centimeters) loaf tin with sunflower oil. Meanwhile, check to see if the yeast is rising. After about 4 or 5 minutes it will have a creamy and slightly frothy appearance on top.
- When ready, stir and pour it, with all the remaining 10 fluid ounces/1 1/4 cups (275 milliliters) water into the flour to make a loose, wet dough. The mixture should be too wet to knead. Put the mixture into the greased tin. Sprinkle the top of the loaves with sesame seeds, if you like. Put the tin in a warm place somewhere close to the cooker or near a radiator perhaps. Cover the tins with a tea towel to prevent a skin from forming. Just as the bread comes to the top of the tin, remove the tea towel and pop the loaves in the oven for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 400 degrees F/200 degrees C/gas mark 6 for another 40 to 50 minutes, or until it looks nicely browned and sound hollow when tapped. The bread will rise a little further in the oven. This is called “oven spring”. If, however, the bread rises to the top of the tin before it goes into the oven it will continue to rise and flow over the edges.
- We usually remove the loaves from the tins about 10 minutes before the end of cooking and put them back into the oven to crisp all round, but if you like a softer crust there’s no need to do this.
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 10 servings |
| Calories | 334 |
| Total Fat | 4 g |
| Saturated Fat | 1 g |
| Carbohydrates | 67 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 10 g |
| Sugar | 1 g |
| Protein | 13 g |
| Cholesterol | 0 mg |
| Sodium | 237 mg |
Reviews
Miserably written recipe.
I also ended up with pancake batter, having carefully weighed out all ingredients.
Search out Darina Allen’s original recipe or see David Lebovitz’s excellent tutorial article on same.
if you are afraid of sticking, grease your pans with solid shortening and line with parchment, it will help you to turn out the loaves with ease.
Having lived outside Cork City i’ve had unlimited access to lovely brown bread and never had one with as crisp a crust as Darina Allen extolls, so it’s fine if you let it steam in the pan a little bit before turning out.
If desperate, graham flour makes an ok substitute but lacks the tooth of irish whole wheat flour- mix 8oz stone ground graham flour with 2oz strong bread flour for every 10oz irish whole wheat flour required by weight.
Don’t be afraid to add a bit more molasses if you want your bread subtly sweet to compliment the wheat flavour , it’s perfectly legit as long as it’s not as sweet as a cake or scone
700ml of water is way too much for 500g of flour. I ended up with a bowl of pancake batter. To rescue my mix I added 500 more grammes of flour and more yeast. In the end the dough was the consistency they aim for in the recipe: loose and sticky.
Bread is a simple combination of 3 or 4 ingredients. The important part is the quantities. This recipe fails miserably in that regard. How others can give 5 stars for pancake batter beats me!
Try the original recipe from the Ballymaloe House cookbook. It uses 3 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1/4 c white flour, 2 tsp salt, 1 1/2 packets dry yeast (not rapid rise and 2 T molasses or treacle. Proof the yeast in half c warm water and the molasses. Add it and another 1 1/2 c lukewarm water to the dry ingredients. Put in greased loaf pan. Let rise 20-30 mins til at top or near top of pan. Bake at 450 for ten mins the for another 30 at 450. If using dark pan reduce heat or time. Turn it right out of of pan to cool. I’ve made it for years. note that this not brown soda bread. That’s another taste entirely.
Extremely disappointed in this recipe. I followed it to the letter and it was a big, tasteless mess, even adding 2t molasses as the posters recommended. There is a bakery nearby that makes the most delicious Irish brown bread and I was hoping this matched it. This stuck horribly to the pan, although well oiled as directed and btw, the extra 1 1/4 C refers to the remainder of WATER, not OIL as one posted said. Would like to give this another shot but if it doesn’t work again I give up; too costly purchasing coarse wholemeal flour from Ireland to have disasters.
I saw this bread on Bobby Flay’s tour of Ireland. I thought it looked wonderful. I was right! I made it for the first time yesterday for my stamp club ladies and they simply devoured it. When I made it I started out using the weight measurement. DON’T make that mistake. Whoever converted the measurements doesn’t know their ounces. So, I tossed it and went by the cup measurements and that was fine. The other thing is that they forgot to tell you when to add the oil. I know it said to use it to coat the pan, but obviously you need to add the rest to the recipe because it doesn’t take 1 1/4 cups of oil to do that. So, I just added it when I added the water and yeast mixture to the flours. I used Stone Bur whole wheat flour and Better for Bread white flour. I will, next time, add a bit more salt and try more molasses, but I will definitely make this over and over again. It is such an easy and delicious yeast bread!
This recipe produces the brown bread my Irish-born family likes best, although for variety I now tweak it. I add a tsp more each of salt and treacle and up to a tablespoon each of oat bran, oat germ, and pinhead oatmeal. I use the amount of water noted, but do bake somewhat longer. The determining factor in how well the bread turns out: the flour used. Over the years, I’ve tried all the US wholemeal flours I could find with varying degrees of success but finally decided to order online Odlums Wholemeal Extra Course. No comparison. Open the bag of Odlums and compare it to the US-flours and it looks and feels different. It is possible that the one negative review below is a result of the flour used. Remember: this recipe is from Ireland– bakers use Irish flour. Check out the video–the only way the dough could pour like it does into the pan is if 3-1/4 cups of water is used. Maybe the reason that much water works is because the Irish flour soaks up more water?
I researched all irish brown bread recipes that I could find and believe that there is an error in the amount of water. Use only 2 cups of water and you should have dough like what they describe here. I uses 2 teaspoon molasses with success. Everything else was the same. I decided on King Arthurs Irish-style wholemeal flour from their catalog. So now I started. The 2 cups of water turned out to be just fine as did the 2 teaspoons molasses. All in all it went together fast and very nice. After check for doneness it came out of the oven 10 minutes early and I did crisp the outside as shown in the recipe. When all is done, it make a very nice Irish brown bread. My husband loved it. Was very simple and fast to put together. I will make this again. We loved it.
On a trip through Ireland in the ’80s, we had fresh-baked brown bread almost every day at the B&Bs where we stayed. Wonderful! About 20 years ago, I found the Ballymaloe recipe and have made it every St. Patrick’s Day since. However, the recipe I have calls for 2 tablespoons of molasses, which gives the final product a wonderful sweetness and depth of flavor. I use Bob’s Red Mill stone-ground wheat flour and dry yeast, as cake yeast is not readily available to me. You need to be flexible about the amount of water used. As Dorina Allen says, the amount you need will vary depending on your flour and your atmospheric conditions. It needs to be really wet and sticky. My loaf turns out perfectly like those I had in Ireland every time. Note: it is a little dense, and the edges are crusty. — The point is, it’s a wonderful artisan bread and is not going to taste like a white loaf. It is fabulous with fresh unsalted butter and maybe a little honey, for breakfast or tea.
I was attracted to how easy of a recipe this was, but I highly advise everyone NOT to try this. I followed it exactly (except doubled the amount of molasses which still failed to add much sweetness), and it came out soggy and tasteless. Within 12 hours there were many areas of mold on the bottom of the loaf. I should have baked cookies instead!