David Lebovitz

Ballymaloe Brown Bread

You can get Irish-style flour from the mill in Ireland (linked in the post) or from King Arthur Flour. Should you live elsewhere, check out my tips for finding foods online where you are. If you don’t want to mail away for it, you might try replacing up to 4 tablespoons of the whole-wheat flour with wheat germ and see if you like the results. Otherwise, try to get good quality whole-wheat flour, preferably stone-ground. If you wish to use all whole-wheat flour, you can omit the white flour and use whole-wheat flour in its place. Tim told me they found they prefer it with just a little bit of white flour in the loaf. Because I wanted to replicate the bread at home just the way they do it there, I measured the ingredients by weight and used fresh yeast, which is sold in some grocery stores and often at natural foods markets. Molasses is widely available in the U.S., although they use treacle at Ballymaloe which is almost the same thing. (In France, it’s called Mélasse.) I didn’t try it with active dry yeast because I was so satisfied with the results using the fresh yeast but according to the Ballymaloe original recipe,” Dried yeast may be used instead of baker’s (fresh) yeast. Follow the same method but use only half the weight given for fresh yeast. Allow longer to rise. Fast active dry yeast may also be used, follow the instructions on the packet.” There are some additional notes from another baker at the end of this recipe.