Transform vanilla ice cream with sweetened breadcrumbs.

Brown bread ice cream is unique to Ireland. Just as other European cuisines have their own iconic dishes used to stretch the last of ingredients which might otherwise go stale. Since home baked Soda bread is best eaten within a day or two of baking, you don’t want to waste any.  It is wonder simply spread with butter on the first day, fabulous toasted on the second day but, by day three, it might be more brick than brioche. Brown bread ice cream was a way to use up the old (not quite stale) bread. Similar traditions exist in cuisines all over the world. In France the 'pain perdu', is used in many different recipes. In Italian cuisine, 'gremolata' dishes make use of the day old bread, turning the stale bread into breadcrumbs, and in England, bread and butter pudding makes use of the nearly stale sliced pan.

An English friend of mine was bemused one day when I mentioned the ‘heel of the loaf’ – a term...

Brown Soda Bread - An Irish Staple

Its not uncommon for you to be offered soda bread when staying in a B&B anywhere in Ireland.

Long ago, the Irish mostly made flat griddle bread because Irish flour didn’t have enough gluten to rise with yeast. Baking soda was developed in the US in 1846 and was quickly adopted by Irish cooks, as it enabled bread with Irish flour to rise. In the late 1800s, white Canadian flour with a higher gluten content came over on returning emigration ships, and bakeries started making white bread raised with yeast, known as “shop bread”, and distributing it by horse and cart.

Irish Soda Bread is delicious and like all recipes, you can make your own changes to please your taste. I discovered one tip from a recipe that I looked up years ago - use raw, unsalted sunflower seeds and mix them in thoroughly. The chemical interaction of the soda and the raw sunflower seeds causes the seeds to turn a beautiful, emerald green that looks fantastic...