Barmbrack

Barmbrack is a fruit bread eaten in Ireland at Halloween, at teatime and on other occasions. It is also known for a fortune-telling game in which small items are hidden inside the bread to predict the future. For example, finding a ring in your slice is taken as a sign of marriage. However, the items and their meanings are not the same everywhere in the country. Even the same bean or stick could be given a different meaning depending on the region. This bread, speckled with dried fruit, varies both in how it is made and in how it is used at festivals.

2 ways to make the speckled bread rise

In Irish it is called bairín breac. Bairín means a loaf, and breac means speckled. The name describes the dried fruit scattered through the dough. In English, barm is also the name of the yeasty froth that forms when ale ferments, and the name is sometimes explained by this ingredient used to make bread rise.

In the yeasted method, flour is kneaded with milk, eggs, butter, sugar and yeast. The dried fruit is sometimes soaked in tea or whiskey before it is used. After the first rise, the drained fruit is mixed into the dough, which is left to rise again in the tin before baking.

The other method is tea brack. The fruit is soaked overnight in cold tea and then mixed, together with the tea, with sugar, egg, flour containing a raising agent, and spices. No time is needed for the dough to rise with yeast. Some recipes contain a lot of fruit, with 350 grams of fruit to 225 grams of flour. The bread may be baked in a rectangular loaf tin or a round tin. It is sometimes wrapped after baking and left for about 2 days before eating. Yeasted versions are closer to bread, while versions made with tea and a raising agent have a texture closer to a cake full of fruit. Either kind can be sliced thinly, toasted and spread with butter, so that the sweetness of the fruit is joined by the dairy flavor and saltiness of the butter.

Barmbrack served with cream at a restaurant in Indianapolis, United States. Photo: Edsel Little, 2012-10-31, Indianapolis, United States. Original image / CC BY-SA 2.0. Downscaled version from the provider; no additional processing.

Omens in a ring, beans and a stick

Sources differ on which items were used for Halloween fortune-telling and on what each item meant. Clodagh Doyle, who is in charge of folklife collections at the National Museum of Ireland, lists a ring for marriage, a coin for wealth, a rag for poverty, a thimble and a button for staying unmarried, and a cross for religious life. A 1930s record in the Schools’ Collection from Adare, County Limerick, says that people gathered around a baker’s barmbrack at teatime with a ring, a thimble, a charm, a pea, a bean, a stick, a rag and a button hidden inside. In this record, the pea meant poverty and the bean meant wealth. The stick was a disturbing omen that the person who found it would be violent toward their future spouse.

In a record from Derrygallon, County Cork, the bean also means wealth, but the person who gets the stick is said to be “beaten badly.” In Adare the stick marked the person who would commit the violence, while in Derrygallon it marked the person who would suffer it, so the same stick had opposite meanings.

Barmbrack is not only baked at home but is also bought at supermarkets for the celebration. Clodagh Doyle notes that fewer people make it by hand today and that supermarkets now supply barmbrack, costumes and sweets.

A teatime scene in a Joyce story, and knocking on doors with bread on New Year’s Eve

In “Clay,” a story in James Joyce’s Dubliners, Maria, who works at a laundry, cuts up large barmbracks at teatime. The others tease Maria that she is likely to get the ring, which shows how hopes about marriage come up at the tea table.

The bread was used not only at Halloween but also in a New Year’s Eve custom of wishing that the family would not go short of food. JP McMahon, a researcher of food culture, describes a record from Kilfinane, County Limerick. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, young people knocked on the doors of houses 3 times with bread and prayed that food would not run short in the coming year. Sometimes the bread was a home-baked barmbrack. At Halloween, items hidden in the bread were used to tell fortunes. On New Year’s Eve, people wished at the doorway for a year of plenty. The fruit bread’s role changes with the season and the place.

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