Irish Barmbrack under the Worm Moon

By Sidonie Maroon

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night and a smooth road all the way to your door. -Irish Blessing 

I felt a giant Yes! when invited to gather with eleven other women to watch the Worm Moon* rise over the Salish Sea. I love reclaiming traditions to meet the challenges of modern life, and it’s a challenge to know how to connect with others, outside of work, with our busyness.

Awaiting the moonrise, sitting round the fire, bundled in blankets, we told stories and watched the pinkery of the setting sun. Singing and sharing bread, we wove further together. I’d tested my new Barmbrack recipe earlier, and brought it warm from the oven. Barmbrack is an Irish gathering bread that’s baked for get-togethers and holidays. It’s a subspecies of Irish soda bread; the barm refers to dough and brack means speckled, because the bread’s spiced and speckled with raisins.

I’ve baked many barmbracks and feel close to this round loaf with a scored cross. My recipe is made with buckwheat groats, quinoa and flax. It’s traditional in flavor, shape and texture but allows those, like me, who can’t eat grains to enjoy warm bread, slathered with butter. It’s an old Irish bread revisioned to meet the modern challenge of food sensitivities.

The moon, a slivered arc, rose from the mountain crags. A golden yolk, climbing to a giant as it broke free of the horizon, casting beams across the water, illuminating a path that ended at our circle.

The woman to the right of me, told the story of how her mother Cornelia, who’d died 9 years earlier, an Irish American, had baked Irish Soda Bread for their gatherings. I offered to name my Barmbrack recipe after her mother. Cornelia Bread. Then, another story was told about how the word “lady” originally meant a woman who kneads bread, a shaper of bread. We get the word fiction, someone who shapes stories from the same word root. So we all agreed to call it “Lady Cornelia Bread”.

It turned out, listening further, that Cornelia loved to bake, and loved to take a recipe and research its healthier roots. I felt shivers, because that’s what I love. Cornelia and I would have had lots to talk about.

I can’t imagine what life will bring when I step into the larger circle of my community, and this is true when the time’s spent outside in the dramatic beauty of cyclical nature.

Since we’re all spending more time at home, it seems like a splendid opportunity to learn to shape and bake yourself a Barmbrack, the gathering bread for sharing better times to come.

* The Worm Moon is the last full moon of winter and named after earthworm castings that appear as the ground thaws. It also signifies the time of year when earthworms and grubs come out of dormancy, according to the Farmer’s Almanac.

Lady Cornelia Bread

A Quimper Barmbrack from the Salish Sea

Makes 1 small loaf with 12 wedges 

Dry Ingredients

1 cup raw quinoa, use a brand that’s pre rinsed, or rinse and dry overnight before grinding 

1 cup buckwheat groats, untoasted kasha

¼ cup flax meal

3 tablespoons psyllium seed husk powder

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons sweet spice

½ cup raisins

½ cup walnuts

Wet

¼ cup unsalted butter, melted

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

1 cup water

Sweet Spice

You will have extra —store it in a jar for future use.

1 cinnamon stick (broken into shards)

¼ teaspoon whole cloves

1 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1  teaspoon whole allspice

1 teaspoon anise seeds

1 teaspoon whole coriander

5 green cardamom pods

¼ teaspoon peppercorns

1 teaspoon dried ginger root powder

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 450 F. Line a dutch oven or round lidded casserole with parchment paper and rub the parchment paper with oil.

2. Assemble the ingredients, grind the sweet spice mix if you don’t already have it on hand.

3. Using a high-speed blender, grind all the dry ingredients together into a flour. Dump the flour into a mixing bowl. Add the raisins and walnuts to the blender and grind into a rough meal and dump into the mixing bowl. Break the meal up into the flour.

4. Melt the butter and measure out the vinegar and water into a liquid measure.  Add the melted
   butter to the other liquids and pour into the flour. Using a rubber spatula, scrape the edge of the bowl, turning the flour into the liquid, keep doing this until it’s all mixed , and the batter has thickened to a dough.

5. Lift the dough and shape it into a round ball by bringing the top towards the bottom. Set the shaped loaf onto the parchment paper. With scissors, cut off the excess paper around the edges. Score a cross, about a ½ inch deep into the loaf with a knife.

6. Bake the loaf with the lid on for 30 minutes. Take the lid off and bake for another 15 minutes.  Remove the loaf from the casserole or Dutch Oven by lifting on the parchment  paper. Let it cool for 30 minutes before slicing. Serve with butter, jam and a pot of Irish tea.