It's the best brown bread in the county

Margaret Kelly’s brown bread has been classed as the best brown bread in the county.

The Rathowen woman, who has been a member of the ICA for the last 13 years, was encouraged to go forward for the national Brown Bread Baking championship by members of her guild, and was chosen to represent Westmeath at ICA headquarters An Grianán in Termonfeckin in County Louth this week (Thursday August 14).

There, she will be up against 27 other regional finalists who will battle it out to participate in the final which will be held at the National Ploughing Championships in September.

Margaret, who has been baking brown bread for the last 45 years, says she never expected to reach this stage.

“The county competition was held in Castlepollard in June, and when I landed there and I saw that most people had made their cake in tins, round tins and square tins, so I was embarrassed really when I laid mine out as I bake it on the flat like my mother used to do,” she explains.

“My mother’s name was from Mary O’Meara and she was a Tipperary woman. She taught me how to make brown bread. It was a tradition that was passed down throughout the years and everyone used to call in for her brown bread with a cup of tea.

“I didn’t make a whole lot of it until I got married, and that’s 45 years ago now, but I make a brown cake nearly every day now.”

Margaret’s brown bread was chosen on the day as the best because the chef who judged the Westmeath competition said it reminded him of how his grandmother used to make it.

Looking ahead to the An Grianán competition, Margaret said she will be extremely nervous on the day.

“I’ll be thinking about it now for days before I go and it’s only a matter of making it. And sure, I’m taking pot luck with it anyway, I’d say there’ll be big opposition there, I’m not expecting or thinking of ever winning it,” she adds modestly.

Margaret, whose favourite way to enjoy a slice of brown bread is with a cup of tea and home-made marmalade, says practice makes perfect when it comes to baking tips.

“I wasn’t any good at it when I started baking it first. I don’t usually weigh my ingredients now. The flour and wheatmeal goes in there, and a teaspoon of bread soda and a teaspoon of salt, mix it up with the ordinary buttermilk.

“I’d cook it for an hour in the electric oven. I used to cook in the stove for a long time but when we got the electric I figured it was easier because you have to watch the temperature so much in the stove oven, you have to keep it at the one temperature. I cook at 200 degrees in the electric oven for an hour.

“The buttermilk is very important, you need the good buttermilk, Champion I use, it’s nice and thick and creamy.

“If it sweats or anything, it will go soggy, so you need to let it rest. A lot of people complain about bread being hard when it comes out of the oven but I use a linen tea towel. I dampen it under the tap first a little and I wrap the bread in it and set it on the wire tray.”

The last search to find the best brown bread in Ireland was held in 1973 at the Ploughing Championships in Wexford, and now that the new one has begun, Margaret believes it is a dying art unless more people start taking it up.

“I don’t think there’s many baking brown bread nowadays. For instance, the local shop down there was out of the wheatmeal, and I went up to Ballinalack, and at two shops in Ballinalack I couldn’t get it, so they’re not even selling the ingredients for it in a lot of shops now.

“Brown bread is lovely and filling. I know you can buy lots of different brown bread nowadays, but I wouldn’t be in to any of that, whole grain bread or any of that.

“If you had three or four cuts of it, with a boiled egg or something, you could go on it for the day. It’s very filling.

“I do think the young people should take it up, it only takes 10 or 15 minutes to make it and I would hate to get up in the morning and think I hadn’t any brown bread in the house. So I’d encourage everyone to take it up. It doesn’t take much at all to make some.”

Margaret will be accompanied on the day by a large group of supporters to An Grianán to cheer her on in the hope that she will be picked as one of two regional finalists to represent Leinster at the Ploughing Championships this September.