Prepare yourself to fall in love with this beautiful Traditional Irish Barmbrack recipe I am sharing with you today. It is a bread which is normally baked in Ireland for Halloween, but I thought there was no better time to bake it in North American than for Saint Patrick's Day, so here it is!
I adapted this recipe from one I found in Coleman Andrew's Book, The Country Cooking of Ireland. I bought my copy used a year or so ago. If you are looking for a good book referencing the cooking of Ireland, you can't get much better than this book.
It can be rather pricey depending on where you get it from and what condition. You need to shop around for it. I paid nowhere near the price that they are asking for it now. Having said that however, it is a really hefty tome to Irish cookery.
I have another recipe for an Irish bread on here, called Irish Tea Brack. The two are similar only in that they both contain copious amounts of dried fruit. One is a yeast bread and one would fall under the auspices of what we consider to be a tea bread.
This is the yeasted version. The other is the tea version and in fact you need to soak the dried fruit used in it overnight in strong tea. Its also very delicious.
Whichever one you choose to make depends on the result you want and what kind of mood you are in. Both are fabulous breads.
The word "brack" comes from the Irish word "breac," meaning...
