The World That Was - Archaic Irish Fruitbread

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was


This week is Halloween, a pre-Christian Irish festival, so decided to make a bread which is fragmentarily recorded on Old Irish ogham stones - a simple sweet fruit bread which can be baked on a pan!

In any case, let's take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video above!


Ingredients

500g / 3 cups flour (wholemeal)

300g / 2 cups blackberries (or raspberries)

300g honey

water to mix


Method


1 - Mix the Flour and Berries

Pour your flour and berries of choice into a bowl, and gently toss everything together. Flour would likely have been stone-ground by hand in Bronze-Age Ireland, so modern wholemeal flour acts as a good substitute today. You can also use plain flour here.

I'm using blackberries in this recipe, because they're in season, but raspberries (or other soft fruits) would also work well.


2 - Add Honey and Water

When your berries are well-distributed through your flour, pour in your honey. Gently fold all this together. Pour in some water to form a cohesive dough. The amount of water you need depends on how dry your mix is to begin with, so just add little by little until it comes together.


3 - Cook

When your dough looks cohesive, go place a portion of it onto a griddle or pan. You don't necessarily need butter or oil for this, but you can use it if you want to make sure your bread doesn't stick! Flatten your portion of dough out into a small disc, about 2cm in height. They don’t need to look perfect when shaping them, because they’ll come out amazing. Leave this to cook over a medium heat for about 5 minutes, before flipping it over onto when the underside turns golden-brown. Serve them up warm, and dig in!


The finished dish is very dense, but deliciously sweet and filling! This griddle bread is dense but fluffy, if you use wholegrain flour, and they keep for quite some time after baking.

While ovens weren't very common in Bronze Age Ireland, this can be prepared in an oven today, as a single large loaf. If you're cooking this as a single loaf, simply bake it at 170C/ 340F for an hour, or until it looks golden-brown!

No matter what way you cook it, the finished bread will come out amazing and fluffy.

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