The Irish Bread You Pull Apart Rather Than Cut

There's a bread that every Irish person grows up eating. You know it from the moment you see it and smell it. Brennan's batch bread. I want to show you how a real Irish baker does it. Hi I'm Gemma Stafford, a professional chef from Ireland and today I'm going to show you how to make traditional Irish batch bread. We're going to start with the dough, shape it into those classic pull-apart loaves and bake them until they're perfectly soft and dark golden brown. So this bread like many other thousands of bread is made up with just some very simple ingredients. What we're going to start out with is bread flour. In Ireland we call this strong flour. Something with higher protein because you really want to get a rip from this bread. You want it to be like nice and strong and capture those bubbles. Into this we are going to add instant yeast. Now in Ireland you'll often see recipes for this using active dried yeast and I'm it is foolproof. You put it straight into the bowl just like this. Think of it like any other ingredient. Salt, sugar, just right in there. You do not have to activate it first. And then we're going to add in some salt. Salt in bread is crucial. Less is not more when it comes to salt. Lovely. Those are our dry ingredients. I'm just gonna let those dry ingredients mix together. A rule of thumb when it comes to bread making is keep yeast on one side and salt on the other because sometimes salt can deactivate yeast. So just keep them on two separate sides of the bowl for right now. So let's talk about liquid. Here I have my water. Now when it comes to bread making often it's required that you have lukewarm water or blood temperature water. I get a question a lot about like what is blood temperature or what does lukewarm mean? Like should I make it too hot? So I always pop mine in the microwave for a few seconds and get it warm. But what blood temperature is, is if you put your finger into the jug of water and you can't feel the water around your finger it means it's a similar temperature to your blood. Which means it's like the perfect temperature for yeast to activate, for yeast to grow, for yeast to feed. So just lightly warmed water. So next we're going to add in some fat and this is what makes batch bread different. In Ireland traditionally it's made with lard or beef drippings which beef drippings are fat that come off cooking beef and then lard is also this fat here. This is very traditional in Irish batch bread making. You can easily get lard at any store. If you don't want to use lard or can't find it you can also replace it with melted butter and that is totally fine too. But the lard is one of those things that makes this bread a little bit different and a little special. To buy lard it actually looks like this. It comes in like a solid white form and then you're going to melt it. Sometimes what I do is I put the lard into my water, pop it into the microwave and melt the two together. Let them warm and get nice and melty. So I'm going to make my dough in a stand mixer. If you want to do it by hand you can totally do that. We'll just take a little bit of extra welly. It's quite a big dough and I'm slowly going to stream in this warm water. I want to give you a little tip about bread making. Looking at this now you might think it needs more water. It does not. Hold off. Do not add more in. Let it keep on kneading. What happens as it kneads, it expresses a little bit of water and it will eventually gather up those dry bits. The problem with adding too much water into dough it makes the dough very difficult to work with. What we're aiming for here is after a few minutes this dough, it will be a bit sticky but it will clean the sides of the bowl. You want to knead this dough on around medium speed for a good few minutes because it's quite a big dough. It's going to need a lot of work. So batch bread is famous in Ireland because of Brennan's bread. Every Irish person knows it. We grew up with it. It was a staple on all of our tables. My Instagram feed is full of Irish recipes but specifically homemade batch bread. It's iconic and I love how I've seen people all over the world, including America, making it, tasting it, making a sausage sandwich out of it. That's what we did. And being away now from Ireland for almost 20 years, it's lovely to be able to make this in my own kitchen here in Los Angeles and get a little taste of home. Lovely. So when I was a young child in Ireland, I was obsessed with making bread dough, any type of bread dough, pizza, anything that contains yeast. I was obsessed with making it. And I remember back then in my mom's kitchen in Dryna in Wexford using her old Kenwood mixer and it would literally bounce across the kitchen because she'd even gotten it for her for a wedding present. But then I got it into my head that maybe my mom told me this, that in France they don't use mixers. They do it by hand. And I thought to myself, well, if they're doing that in France, that's what I'm going to do in Wexford, Ireland in the early 90s. So I started doing all my doughs by hand. It was a good learning lesson. It was not necessary, but you know that I was just so strict about technique back then and doing it the right way. You know, I did a lot of horse riding back then, so I was well able for it. So we're going to put our dough into a greased bowl. You'll see here the dough is soft. It's spongy, but it shouldn't be too wet or sticky, just like that. And then we are going to cover with cling wrap nice and tight. For those of you who are new to bread making, doughs don't like to get any air at them because they'll form a skin and if it forms a skin, it won't proof past that skin. So keep it nice and tight and then also put a tea towel on top to give it a nice warm environment. Remember that yeast is a living thing. We fed it with warm water that'll help it grow. We want to give it a nice warm space to be able to proof and thrive and it will feed off the yeast in the dough as it proofs. This dough proofs very fast. What we're looking for is for it to double in size. It'll get really nice and big. The longer that it proofs, the more flavor it will develop. So just remember that. The one thing that bread teaches us is patience. And one thing that you can't set your clock by is if it's ready or not, you're going to have to wait, watch it and the bread will tell you when it's done. So we're going to set this aside at room temperature to proof for around two hours. In Ireland, this would traditionally be done by the agar, which was a stove that was on all year round. And it would just slowly there, the warmth of the agar or a fire would just slowly let it bubble up and grow. So I'm going to put mine right there on the cooker top. And we'll come back in a little bit and see when it's ready. So look at this. Like I told you, this dough proofs big and it proofs fast. It doesn't have a good bit of yeast in it. But when you've had this in Ireland, it is a yeasty tasting bread, which is good. It kind of like that's that's the flavor of batch break bread. So what you're going to want to do is knock down the dough like so turn it out onto your countertop. I was going to put a little bit of flour on my surface because it's a little bit sticky. What you want to do, divvy up this dough into four equal pieces. They'll end up being around 270 grams each, roughly, and then we're going to form them each into a ball. You do want them to have kind of a uniform look for your finished dough to come out looking nice. So let me just show you how you can like just successfully and easily shape a piece of dough. We don't want too much flour on the surface. I didn't put a lot. Push the dough into the counter between your hands like so use the traction of the surface and the lack of flour to give you a lovely ball just like that. It's a lovely soft dough. It's a really easy one to work with. So I'm going to show you again, ball of dough. If you want, sometimes you can just pull, you know, kind of make it smooth on top, pull the edges, give it a make it smooth into the counter. You can do it with one hand, you can do it with two. When I first moved United States, my job was as a bread baker. And at two o'clock in the morning, I was making dinner rolls, hundreds of dinner rolls every day and then like baguettes and everything. So you become a pro at shaping and then just pop it into your pan. So here I have an eight inch pan, it's been greased with a little bit of oil. And we're going to put the doughs side by side. So I'm doing this in an eight by eight. So you can get either two loaves or you can get four rolls, that's totally up to you. But what I'm going to do here is this is important. It comes down to the taste, the look of the bread, just as likely with some flour on top. And I'll tell you why. Number one, this is how it's served in Ireland, it gets very dark and toasty with the flour on top. It almost smells like popcorn. But also, here's the thing, we're so used to proofing breads in Dutch ovens. And we have that lid to save us. But what can happen is this is going to proof and if it proofs too much or the dough is a little bit sticky, it will stick to the cling wrap that flour on top will prevent the dough from sticking and pulling. So that little layer of flour will prevent that from happening. And once it's proved, it'll just peel easily right off. So here we go again, I'm going to put a towel over them, I'm going to set them over to the side again, roughly another hour and a half or so until the doughs are really lovely and risen. And I'm going to show you exactly what that looks like. So this is really important. I want you to take a close look at these. One of the questions I haven't answered yet is what is batch bread. Now let me just pull this away. Do you see how beautifully and big those have risen? They are light, they are airy. We put in four dough balls beside each other. Batch bread is baking together. It is pull apart bread. That's simply what it is. When you are making any type of batch bread, cinnamon rolls are batch, you put them side by side. And the goal is for them to proof into each other. Then when they go into the oven, they bake into each other and it becomes a pull apart bread, also known as batch bread. Also very easy for old school bakers to make in Ireland because they put the loaves side by side by side and they all bake in together. You don't need a million tins. If you're unsure if your bread is proofed enough or not, give it a little poke. If it bounces back just like the way that did, it is ready and proofed enough. If it doesn't bounce back, give it a little bit more time. I'm going to dust a little bit more flour on top because like I said, it's also part of the characteristic and the flavor of batch bread. Now you will see recipes online where people say you can put a little bit of a water bath into your bread to steam as you can totally do that for a few minutes. I've found that it's totally not necessary. I have my oven heated really hot. So I think this is perfect time to get them in there. This bread loves a really hot oven. So 450 degrees Fahrenheit, 225 degrees Celsius for roughly 35 to 45 minutes. I like to bake it kind of middle to top rack to make sure it gets really lovely and brown. We want a rich, dark brown color here. We want that flour to get toasted because that's what batch bread is all about. Now while it's in the oven, I'm just going to answer some of your hotline questions. Can I freeze this bread? The answer is yes. I freeze all my bread. You can freeze it for up to two months. You can take it out. You can slice it or wrap it up in foil, pop it back into an oven 300 degrees Fahrenheit, 150 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes and refresh the bread. It'll be like new. Can I bake the bread in two loaves? Yes, you can. Don't make four balls. Just do two loaves side by side, and then they will bake in together. Or if you want to do just one whole big eight inch, that's totally fine. That dough is too big to put in one nine by five. And that's also not batch baking. Can I use oil instead of lard? Yes, you can. I suggest butter. Butter has more flavor. Lard has more flavor than I feel like the melted oil. So I would go with butter first and something salted and good quality. And lastly, do you have to steam this bread? You do not have to. I often just put it into the oven as is. If you want to steam it a little bit, put a pan into your oven with a little bit of hot water 20 minutes. After that, take it out and bake it dry. Our timer has just gone off. I can smell the toasty flour in the air, so I know it is ready. Also in true Irish style, I put on some Irish sausages and we're going to have that with our bread. So this is what I'm talking about. Deep, dark brown crust coming out of the oven. This smells and looks just like what I grew up with. Like all bread you make, I recommend letting it cool down at room temperature for at least an hour before cutting it. Because the beauty of batch bread is pulling it apart and look at that beautiful, soft white crumb and the steam coming from it. What I love about this is as you pull it apart, you can get the smell and see the steam coming out of it. There's something so rewarding about this loaf. The crust isn't too thick, but it's really crispy. And that dark color on top, we did that deliberately for extra flavor and the flour just really completes the whole story of batch bread. In Ireland, we have a lot of traditions around food. And when it comes to batch bread, there is no better way to serve it with some Irish butter, some freshly cooked sausages, and a little bit of tomato sauce. And don't forget a big old fashioned pot of Irish tea. There's a saying in Ireland, you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. And that's exactly what's going on on this table. If you're going to do it, do it right. I hope you enjoy this recipe for traditional Irish batch bread. If you'd like to see more traditional recipes, then get comfy because I've got tons more for you to check out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you back here again really soon.