Thoughtful bread from an Irish baker

The BBC had a reality TV series recently about a group of women in a Yorkshire village who want to make bread, restore a mill, run a bakery and revitalise their community, as you do. It was a bit drawn out, but it showed an Irish artisan baker doing some fun recipes, such as a red beetroot bread, and black squid-ink bread.

He’s called Patrick Ryan and believe it or not, he did a degree in corporate law before embarking on the culinary career.

Then he took a National Certificate in Professional Cookery at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, and worked in restaurants around the world including France, Australia and Ireland (at Kevin Thornton’s).

"Rise up and bake" - Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan

The other half of the baking partnership is Duncan Glendinning, a former web designer who grew his own veg, went looking for advice from Dick Strawbridge (the former British army officer and Scrapheap Challenge man who had that TV series “It’s Not Easy Being Green”), then went to Fiji for a sustainable tourism project, and met Patrick there.

Duncan set up the Thoughtful Bread Company near Bath in 2008. It’s an eco-bakery (bartering, recycling, foraging etc) and Duncan – who had no culinary background – got his old mate Paddy to be the head baker.

Their first cookbook, “Bread Revolution” is due out in March 2012, and it celebrates real bread – simple, flavour-filled, with excellent ingredients.

They aren’t exactly fans of “an próiseas Chorleywood” or today’s mass-produced, plastic-wrapped, additive-packed sliced pans – as can be seen in their promotional video. It’s, er, explosive stuff, about “crust to crust eating”.

Anyway, while the video is a bit wacky you can file Paddy Ryan under both “rising star” and “very down to earth”.

Beetroot bread recipe

While we’re waiting for the duo’s “Bread Revolution” to hit the shops, here’s a beetroot bread recipe from the Purely Food blog.

Basically it’s your basic dough mix (yeast, a glug of olive oil, 250ml of warm water, salt, 500g of strong white flour) and 150g of cooked beetroot – the vacuum packed variety, drained and pureed.

Or what we do is use fresh beetroot. You can cook them in a microwave (with a splash of water, covered with clingfilm that you pierce), then peel and roughly grate them. Divide the dough in two, mix the grated beetroot well into one piece of dough, then gently work the two pieces together for a marbled effect (i.e. don’t over-mix them).

More on beetroot anon, but if you think beetroot bread sounds ultra trendy and uber modern, check out an article extolling its virtues in the Chambers Edinburgh Journal – from 1847!

Advertisement