Irish Brown Bread x3, and a global pandemic

Greetings from the coronapocalypse of 2020.  Right now, I am at home for an indefinite amount of time.  Our county and city have declared a stay-at-home order for all non-essential work and services.  The university has mandated for research labs to reduce to "essential" staffing only, which I am not as a postdoc researcher.  However, I may get pulled to help with clinical service at some point; since pathologists aren't front line care providers, it would likely be if the regular pathologists get sick and need to self-isolate and need backup support.  While we wait for the storm of infections to hit us, I figured now would be a good time to reboot the blog and post some recent baking exploits, if only to distract myself from the vortex that is the news.  So, welcome to the new and fancy redesigned blog!

First, an update on life.  Since my last post, I have finished residency.  I went on to complete a clinical fellowship in Liver/GI pathology.  And now I'm in the postdoctoral research phase of my training program and have been back in the lab since July of this past year.  I am working in a wonderful lab with many hungry labmates who are always willing to give my baked goods a try.  My progress has been slow but steady, and I am very happy with the mentorship and camaraderie I have in this lab.  I gave up doing clinical service for this past year, because I wanted to get a focused start to my research project, which I am essentially building from scratch in the lab.  Also, in all honesty, I was more than a little burnt out by the end of my fellowship and needed to take a step back for awhile.  I hope to get back into clinical work on a regular basis again by next year if all is going pretty well with my research.  

How long will I be in the lab?  Well, the postdoc period I have been granted is three years.  During this time, my salary is guaranteed by my department and the hope is to get published and be able to submit an early career development sort of grant, the kind that spans "mentored" training to "independent investigator" status.  In NIH terms, it would be a K-award, but there are many similar types of grants from private institutions that are also highly regarded.  With funding like that, I'd be able to get a faculty position to do mostly research and maybe a little clinical work, and focus on getting a lab off the ground.  Old-school tenure track way.  So if that goes well, I'll be doing basic/translational research as a large component of my time for the rest of my career.  

However, things may not go as hoped, and likely in that scenario, I will take an academic faculty position and practice primarily Liver/GI pathology.  I would still have opportunities to do research, such as clinical research, or helping out basic science labs with their pathology evaluations, but I wouldn't be leading my own research program and I would have only minimal time percentage to do research.  

So I'm finally down to the last fork in the road in the next few years.  Wish me luck (because I'll definitely need it)!

But to be honest, with all going on in the world today, who knows what the infrastructure for academic medical careers will be like after this all blows over.  Hospitals are going to be hit very hard financially through this crisis, and maybe we'll get pledges for more research funding through the government, but likely with a focus on infectious disease research.  Our research is at a standstill, so it will take us awhile to get back on track.  But we're all in the same boat together.

All of this has nothing to do with Irish brown bread, though, other than I've stockpiled tons of it now because of the recommendations against sharing food out of concern for spreading COVID-19, and therefore I have not been able to pawn off the usual amount to the lab/resident room!

Over the last year or two, I've seen multiple brown bread recipes on the Internet, and then Jess recently make a fortuitous trip to England this past year for some work-related research, making a detour to Ireland.  She extolled the virtues of brown bread and even found some at the British import store near her upon returning Stateside.  So I decided this was going to be the year I would test out some recipes for St. Patrick's Day.  

I gathered my key ingredients: Irish stone-ground whole wheat flour (Odlum's, from Amazon, although more expensive now than what I got it for) and buttermilk.  I originally wanted to try the yeast-based version from David Lebovitz too, but upon examination of of the ingredient label of Jess's imported-from-Ireland bread, it was clearly a buttermilk-based bread, not a yeast bread, so I figured those recipes would be the best to start out with.  Then when my husband came back from the store with a half-gallon jug of buttermilk ("Are you sure? it's really large" he asked via text. "yes it's fine" I naively texted back), I decided to go Pancake Princess on the buttermilk versions.

A peek inside the flour bag - super coarse whole wheat flour!!

After some digging around the Internet, I scrounged up two other likely contenders to join the Food in Jars Irish brown bread recipe I had already set my sights on to try months ago.  One was from the RTE ("Ireland's National Public Service Broadcaster") website, from the chef and owner of MacNean House and Restaurant in Ireland, and the other one was from some dude who left a recipe in the comments of a very badly-rated Food and Wine recipe for brown bread.  Several commenters after him commented on his recipe rather than the Food and Wine recipe.  

And thus we have the three contenders (with recipes linked): 1) Food in Jars, 2) MacNean House, and 3) Random Dude (I took the baking soda down to 3 tsp for this recipe).  Here are the whole loaf shots:

Food in Jars

MacNean House (top), Random Dude (bottom)

So who was the winner?? First, all three of them were delicious!  The nuttiness of the coarse stone-ground whole wheat is like nothing I've eaten before.  So good.  That being said, I personally prefer the MacNean house one the best.  The Food in Jars and Random Dude's recipes both had added oats and other wholesome goodies, but I think those additions made for a little more crumbly texture.  The MacNean recipe, like the Random Dude's recipe, had a little bit of white flour to provide a little more structure but was still predominantly the whole wheat flour for the wheaty nuttiness, and it was the cleanest tasting with the best texture, in my opinion.  It also had the nicest dome, which to me meant it had a good ratio of buttermilk to baking soda with good rise.

Top: Food in Jars, Middle: MacNean House, Bottom: Random Dude

As I alluded earlier, the coinciding of this massive series of testing with the decree of no more food sharing at work due to infection concerns has left me with a whole ton of brown bread in my freezer.  If my opinions change as I slowly make my way through my hoard, I'll update here 😁.

Hope everyone stays safe and healthy during this uncertain time.

MacNean House Wheaten Bread (adapted from here by DPLK)

Ingredients:

500 g Irish-style coarse wholemeal flour (from Amazon, or King Arthur Flour)

125 g bread flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

600 ml (1 pint) buttermilk, plus a little extra if necessary

1 tbsp light brown sugar

1 tbsp melted butter, plus extra butter for greasing and serving

1 tbsp golden syrup (I used maple syrup in substitute, honey would also work)

1 tbsp old-fashioned oats

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 400°F.

Grease two 8x4x3 inch loaf pans or one 14x4x4 inch pullman pan.

In one large bowl, sift and whisk together the flours, baking soda and salt. In another vessel, measure out the buttermilk and add the melted butter, sugar, and syrup; whisk to combine.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients. Using a large spoon or spatula, quickly mix/fold until homogenous and you have achieved a "nice dropping consistency".  It should be a very wet dough, but not quite wet enough to be a batter.

Divide the mixture equally between the greased loaf pans and sprinkle the oats evenly on top. 

Bake for about 50 minutes to 1 hour, until a skewer comes out clean.  The crust should be browned and crusty.  Be careful to check to make sure the loaves aren't browning too much halfway through baking. You can tent some foil on top or reduce oven temp a little if browning too much.

Once done, take the bread out of the oven and dump out onto a cooling rack.  The bottom should sound hollow when tapped.  If it doesn’t, return bread to the oven for another 5 minutes.  Cool completely before slicing.  Freezes well.