Saturday, March 17, 2018

Irish stone dough.






When dry stone Waller Paraic Poil was visiting here from Ireland he helped out with a big stone wall project Mark and I were working on. While he was staying With Mary and I, he fancied having some home made bread and showed us how to make his mother’s traditional Irish soda bread.

I noticed he took great care mixing the combining the brown, white flour and the baking soda with the right amount of buttermilk so that the dough was not too moist. After he had firmly kneaded it into a round fleshy lump it looked not unlike a round rock. 

Lots of parallels have been made comparing stones and bread. What was particularly interesting for me however was the visual of the relationship between ‘dry stone’ and its doughy counterpart not being too moist, or rather being ‘dry’ enough. A wetter mixture would be incorrect. It would be too gooey to work with and would not hold its shape, nor would it have the right look or yummy taste after it was baked.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.