By Irishexaminer.com,Joe McNamee

Copyright irishexaminer

Though I have been involved voluntarily with RBI since the off, I unashamedly declare it to be one of the most important of all not-for-profit Irish food organisations.

It began on a bitterly cold evening in January 2015 as the last light faded from a brilliant blue sky over Co Kilkenny.

These bakers had travelled from all over to assemble in a converted farm building at Highbank Orchard, itself a storied name in Irish food.

Food advocate/activist Keith Bohanna wanted to see if it was possible to establish an organisation modelled on the UK Real Bread Campaign, co-founded in 2008 by Sustain and legendary real bread guru, Andrew Whitley, author of the seminal Bread Matters, a bible for bakers.

Six bakers travelled: Kamal Scarpello (Scarpello & Co), Donegal; Thibault ‘Tibo’ Peigne (Tartine Organic Bakery), Dublin; Patrick Ryan (Firehouse Bakery), Wicklow; and Josephine Plettenburg ( speltbakers.ie), Kilkenny.

Declan Ryan travelled from Cork, bearing a serious reputation. Ireland’s first Michelin star holder, for Arbutus Lodge, back in 1974, he then reinvented himself as a baker, with Arbutus Breads first introducing Cork and Ireland to sourdough bread in 2000.

The sixth baker was Joe Fitzmaurice, of Riot Rye, in Co Tipperary, who baked only sourdough breads in a large woodfired oven and who would become RBI’s equivalent to Whitley: guru, conscience, and beating heart of the organisation.

Bohanna, knowing we shared similar principles on ethics and transparency around food, invited me as some class of rapporteur and facilitator.

First order of business was to define ‘real bread’, easily done, all agreeing it solely comprised only flour, water, and prolonged fermentation time.

The next issue was trickier: should baker-members of this proposed organisation bake only real bread? All six baked real bread as per the definition above but several also used fresh yeast in certain breads — and then there was ‘brown bread’.

Brown bread is an Irish cultural touchstone, an untouchable cornerstone of traditional food.

Ryan, the most pre-eminent baker, sold a brown bread based on his granny’s recipe.

Though he then led the Irish sourdough charge, he wasn’t for turning, even though all six freely acknowledged brown bread is technically ‘cake’, artificially leavened with bicarbonate of soda (bread soda).

In fact, brown bread resulted when the industrially produced chemical was introduced in the 19th century as an instant leavening agent to bake bread with famine relief corn, eventually replaced with wholemeal flour for brown bread.

It may be beloved, it can be delicious, but brown bread is not real ‘bread’. Diplomacy and compromise prevailed, it being decided RBI members would have at least one real bread and no truck at all with the artificial additives and factory processes of the industrial baking sector.

And so Real Bread Ireland was born. Today, there are more than 200 baker-members along with millers and farmer-growers producing the first Irish-grown food-grade grain since the 1980s, with several baker-members now baking the first truly Irish breads, from grain to gullet, in generations.

RBI has also enabled a thriving market for real bread, alternative to its nutritional and taste-inferior, factory-produced sliced pan.

Those initial consumers who first shied away from ‘weird tastes’ are now fervent converts.

Many with gluten intolerances have discovered real sourdough, fermented over time, thus breaking down gluten, is far easier to digest, infinitely more filling and nutritious.

Ironically, the greatest testament to the rise of real brea here is the amount of fake sourdough bread — dubbed ‘pseud-dough’, by Whitley —in shops around the country.

Well, if you want the real deal, buy your bread from a member of Real Bread Ireland.

Concern have launched a Cook for Gaza fundraising campaign, taking place throughout October, open to cooks of all levels and ability, to cook and share a meal, at home, work or anywhere at all with a table, to raise funds for the people of Gaza, with a particular focus on delivering clean drinking water and improving sanitation.

Upon registering, potential cooks receive Cook for Gaza placemats, three delicious recipes and za’atar from Zaytoun – a cooperative supporting Palestinian farmers — kindly provided by Nourish Health Food Store, and anyone raising more than €200 will receive a Concern apron as a thank you.

https://cookforgaza.concern.net

Top marks to the wonderful Kelly’s Resort Hotel & Spa, in Rosslare, Co Wexford, who always seem to go the extra mile with their off-season mid-week holiday packages, which come with the added advantage of experiencing chef Chris Fullam’s superb cooking at the hotel’s gorgeous glass-cube Sea Rooms restaurant, along with the expert-led demos and workshops.

Subjects covered include gardening, wine tasting, and Midweek Cooking with Paul Flynn.

TODAY’S SPECIAL

Speaking of baking, I recently and quite effortlessly knocked out a very fine batch of scones.

Now, I’ve been baking decent sourdough breads, though I say so myself, for a fair few years, and, on special occasions can turn out a mighty fine brown ‘bread’, but I rarely if ever attempt scones unless I’m in the market for ammunition for my catapult.

It seems I don’t have the ‘hands’ for scones but this time my secret weapon was a bottle of Lorraine Aspill’s Daisy Cottage Farm Irish Fruit Scone Mix.

Yep, ‘bottle’, for Lorraine’s pre-blended dry mix, of flour, caster sugar and sultanas, comes in a little bottle (€2.95), to which you rub in butter and, at the ‘fine breadcrumb’ stage, add egg and a little milk.

Then, roll out the dough, cut the shapes, fling it into the oven for 20 minutes while you whip the cream, boil the kettle for tea and spoon out the jam, all the better to savour these moist, sweet and wonderfully light scones.

Lorraine carries a range of ‘baking bottles’, including brown scones, white soda bread and her brown bread which won two stars at the UK Great Taste Awards.

daisycottagefarm.ie