Farm Week 8/3/24
Support our local bakeries at Easter
March is a busy month with Mother’s Day, St Patricks Day and Easter all falling close together. The inevitable hot cross buns have started appearing in the supermarkets, a sure sign that Easter is just around the corner. Easter eggs have been on the shelves for some time and there is a little bit of Spring appearing in the hedgerows. I wonder how the Comber Early potato planting is going?
I do enjoy a traditional hot cross bun from one of our local bakeries, and we are really fortunate to have a number of fine bakeries, both large and small, in our substantial membership.
I am always keen to encourage support for local shops and in particular local bakeries because of their focus on quality, innovation and service. Many have won UK Great Taste and Blas na hEireann, Irish National Food awards for their commitment to excellence in everything they do and their outstanding taste.
We are extremely fortunate in Northern Ireland to have maintained an infrastructure of good bakeries that are locally-owned and quick to respond to the tastes of local customers, as is evident in the growth of speciality sour dough bread in recent years. I am still a big fan of Nutty Krust, wheaten, Veda and our traditional breads, particularly wheaten farls, none of those seem to last long in our house.
I hope they are all able to continue to do so in the years ahead. Times are challenging for them as they grapple with energy and other costs and also from the cost-of-living crisis among consumers. They deserve our support. They are helping to keep Northern Ireland’s great baking traditions and products alive and well.
As well as traditional wheaten loaves, potato, soda, pancakes and treacle breads we are also outstanding at producing sausage rolls, barmbracks, fruit and cherry scones all fresh from the griddle and oven. Where else would you find a ‘donkey’s lug’ coconut coated finger or a fruit square, a slice of tipsy cake or an infamous monster fifteen? Even Derry has a bakery famous for cream horns, as was epitomised in the episode in Derry Girls where Granda Joe was spotted with a cream horn on the way to see a female friend. Our high streets in cities, towns and villages need the rich aroma wafting from a local bakery, and our bakery traditions are an important part of our culinary culture.
FoodNI has played its part in keeping traditions alive through our involvement of the Tiptree World Bread Awards and especially our support for the Irish Wheaten Bread and Potato Bread categories over the years.
It is interesting to see what the big supermarkets have done to turn the hot cross bun into a mass-produced seasonal commodity by pairing it with cheeses and now chutney and various types of chilli, a really hot bun. There’s chocolate chip, triple chocolate, banoffee, orange marmalade buns, apple and cinnamon, lemon and blueberry. There are gluten free hot cross buns too.
While I’ve never been one to stand in the way of new product development – and bakery is among the most innovative food sectors, I yearn for some traditional tastes such as the hot cross bun, lightly toasted with some local butter and maybe some local lemon curd. I love the gentle aroma of the cinnamon and mixed spice.
Hot cross buns, of course, have been synonymous with Easter since they first appeared in 12th century England. Hot cross buns, I understand pre-date Christianity, with their origins in paganism. Ancient Egyptians used small round breads topped with crosses to celebrate the gods. Later the Greeks used them to mark the change of the season Here we are, thousands of years later still enjoying them, the buns have certainly come a long way since those days but nothing beats sharing them with family or friends over a cup of tea.
