In my travel recollection, the crunchy brown bread I had in Ireland in about 1987 was some of the best wheat bread I’ve ever eaten. It wasn’t quite as dark as this bread, and I’m pretty sure it was a yeast-raised bread, but it used a type of milled wheat and grains that was unlike anything I’d eaten up to then, or since. I went to the grocery store with our friends we were staying with and they had rows of warm brown bread.
When I came home from that Ireland trip I looked in my various bread cookbooks for recipes. We didn’t have the internet to research with back then! I tried a couple. Nope. Didn’t measure up. Then someone told me the milled wheat produced in Ireland is different than anything we can buy here. Ah, well, that explained it. So I’d never tried making it since.
My Tivo records any new Ina Garten shows, and when they pop up in my Tivo menu, I’m sure to be watching her show. And this last week she did one on this bread. I was instantly interested and decided to try making it. So glad I did.
Ina used a brand of wheat flour called Heckers. I’d never heard of it before, but I learned it’s an East Coast label and is milled in the U.S. It’s carried at some Wal-Mart stores in the East, but I just went online and they’re out of stock (probably because of Ina Garten’s show). I bought an organic, non GMO whole wheat flour which is a finer mill than others – at least finer than ones from regular store shelf brands anyway.
Storing
Wheat Flour:
Just remember, whole wheat flour doesn’t keep for long at room temp – it will go bad – so seal it well and store in the freezer.
What’s different about this bread is how it’s made – the texture. The dry ingredients are stirred into a large bowl, then the wet ingredients are poured in and you use your fingers to lightly – very lightly – stir it together, pulling with 2-4 fingers from the center outward, until the batter (it’s more a batter than it is a dough) is mixed through and no dry streaks are visible. It’s very sticky and wet. Just know this is not like anything you’ve ever mixed before as a quick bread. The batter actually pours. No kneading could be done in any case.
Meanwhile you will have buttered a loaf pan and the batter is poured into the pan and the top sprinkled with some more oats. It goes into a 450°F oven, and immediately you turn the oven temp down to 400° and it bakes for about 45-55 minutes. Use an instant read thermometer – bread is done at somewhere between 195° and 205°F. I took the bread out at 200°F. At 45 minutes my loaf wasn’t done and it took another 10 minutes to reach that temp.
I cooled it for about 5 minutes in the pan, then upturned it and cooled the loaf on a rack. I served this to a group of friends alongside a bowl of soup, with Kerry Gold butter.
SERVING: you will want to slice this bread thicker than a regular yeast bread because the structure of a quick bread is just different – it doesn’t have the glue (gluten) to hold it together. So hold your hand over the loaf, using your 4th and 5th fingers to keep the far edge from breaking off, and use a serrated knife and saw slowly.
What’s GOOD: love-loved the bread. So easy to make – truly. The only oddball thing was buying Guinness stout beer! Loved the flavor and warm flavor from the wheat flour and Guinness. Was this as good as I remembered from Ireland – well, no, but it was close.
What’s NOT: nothing at all.
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Irish Guinness Brown Bread
Recipe By: Ina Garten recipe
Serving Size: 12
1 cup oatmeal — NOT quick cooking type, but use McCann’s, plus extra for sprinkling
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour — such as Heckers
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar — lightly packed
2 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
11 ounces Guinness stout — (11- to 12-ounce) at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk — shaken
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 tablespoons unsalted butter — melted, plus extra for brushing the pan
serve with salted butter such as Kerry Gold
NOTE: If you use King Arthur Flour, the batter may be thicker – suggestion to use the larger quantity of stout – the batter needs to be very loose – not as loose as pancake batter, but not sturdy enough to roll out and knead, for instance. But this dough isn’t kneaded anyway.
1. Preheat the oven to 450°F.
2. In a large bowl, combine the oats, whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the beer, buttermilk, melted butter, and vanilla. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into the well. With your fingers, stir the batter from the middle of the bowl to the outside, until it’s well mixed. It will look more like cake batter than bread dough.
3. Brush a 9 x 5 x 2 1/2-inch loaf pan with melted butter. Pour the batter into the pan and sprinkle the top with oats. Put the bread in the oven, immediately turn the temperature down to 400°F, and bake for 45 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean (mine took 55 minutes to reach 200°F). Turn the bread out onto a baking rack and allow to cool completely. Slice and serve with salted butter, preferably Kerry Gold!
Per Serving: 175 Calories; 2g Fat (8.6% calories from fat); 5g Protein; 35g Carbohydrate; 4g Dietary Fiber; 1mg Cholesterol; 623mg Sodium.
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