The Soda Farl

This blog is for people who can’t cook, won’t cook, don’t cook. It’s for people like me who need a helping hand when it comes to getting to grips with leavening and kneading, blooming and docking, knowing how not to under cook or over cook. The blog aims to strip away the barriers that often put people off preparing homemade food because of overly complicated recipes and terminology that is often as baffling and hard to follow as a drunk man giving directions to the nearest toilet.

In this episode we are going to look at Soda farls, the no fuss bread that loves a lump of butter.

Did the humble soda bread really cause the spilt in the Christian church in 1054? Was the first soda farl made using ash from a burnt log? Why can you never get a wheaten farl when you want one?

You can skip to the button for the recipe and tips

I’m sure many will be familiar with the old saying “you’ll follow the crows for it one day” a rebuke directed towards an ungrateful child who didn’t finish their food, or in my case, refused to even start it. I simply never had a taste for soda bread. It was too dry, too heavy and too floury. I was a bit of a light weight when it came to bread. I preferred a nice light and fluffy evenly shaped slice of pan loaf, unlike my cousins who lived in the country and who could devour four farls like there was no tomorrow then go out into the field beside their house and chase a bullock through a gap in the ditch all evening just for the craic. Although, in my defence I do enjoy a wheaten farl with jam when I can get my hands on one. For some unknown reason home bakeries only ever seem to bake a hand full of wheaten farls, usually, but not exclusively, on Mondays. This may have been to create a false sense of demand which would encourage the customer to buy extra plain sodas or whatever else was on display that the baker needed off load before it got too hard to sell.

When I was growing up the Saturday matinee in the Astor cinema was the high light of the week. We were fed a diet of World War 2 and cowboy and Indian movies. Afterwards we would re-enact the battle scenes taking the side of either the Japs or Marines or the Cowboys or the Indians. For some reason I never found myself on the side of the marines or the cowboys which meant that my gang were invariably beaten into submission by the local John Wayne or Steve McQueen. I quite enjoyed being a Red Indian as we got to light fires and sit around making strange and exciting noises with our mouth as our hand beat out a rhythm on our lips. Perhaps it was while gathered around a camp fire singing and frolic’n’ wildly, kicking up a storm of ash and sweat, that the native American Indians first discover that you could use pearl ash to leaven bread and make a powerful big soda.

It wasn’t until about the 1830 that the Irish got wind of this easy bake bread cuisine which had the added bonus of been relatively cheap to make as it requires only a couple of ingredients ,no kneading and a simple flat surface to bake it on. The word farl comes from the Scott’s garlic word fardle Which has its origins in the old German word viertel ( pronounced freetle ) meaning a forth part. Coincidentally it was the German born pope Leo IX who was the head of the Catholic Church in 1054 when the argument for and against whether or not leavened or unleavened bread should be used for the sacrament of communion. The western church argued that the bread should remain unleavened as this is how bread would have been served at the last supper while the Eastern church insisted leavened bread represented the rising of Christ as celebrated at Easter. This was one of the four main issues that led to the great split between East and Western churches.

They say there is more than one way to skin a cat but only one way to make a farl, leavened or unleavened,  wheaten or plain ; get it right and you will have a bakers delight, get it wrong and it will sit in your gut like a millstone that the devil himself would have bother shifting.

Recipe and tips

Equipment

Bowl

Wooden spoon

Heavy pan

Ingredients

Plain flour

Butter milk

Salt

Bicarbonate soda

Method

Empty everything into a bowl and mix until all the ingredients combine into a sticky consistency.

Turn he mix out on to floured surface and fold over a few times

Shape the dough into a circle and flatten until it’s about 2cm in depth

Cut into four even triangle shaped pieces.

Sprinkle the pan with some flour and place on the hob on a medium heat

Cook for 8 minutes each side.

When the farls are an inviting golden brown stand them on their ends so that the sides are cooked also.

Leave them to cool on a wire rack.

Cut down the middle and add butter to taste.

Tips

Bring the butter milk to room temperature before adding it to the mix

Add a spoonful of apple cider vinegar to the buttermilk

Throw in a handful of raisins to make a fruit farl.