Maggie Murphy's Pot Oven Bread

Title:
Maggie Murphy's Pot Oven Bread

Yield:
1 Servings

Categories:
Ireland,
Breads




Ingredients:





     1    Whole meal irish soda bread






      Down yonder in one of our big fields is a lovely mysterious ruin of an


 old house and grist mill--moss covered stone walls, roof fallen in over a


 perfectly arched stone doorway--and at one end of this relic is a tiny


 two-room cottage that was once the miller's cottage. There, almost


 forescore years ago, Maggie Murphy first saw the light of day, and there


 she will live out all the days that are left her. Spry as a cricket, she


 bicycles the five miles into the village once a week and peddles back


 (uphill most of the way) with whole-wheat flour among her purchases. She


 cooks over an open hearth fire and mixes her soda bread just as in the


 recipe for Whole Meal Irish Soda Bread, but she has no oven--just a


 three-legged iron pot oven. She sets this right in the red-hot coals on her


 hearth, rubs it inside with a bit of fat pork, drops her cake of


 whole-wheat dough into it, puts on the cover and then shovels some of the


 red coals onto the cover. Heat top and bottom she has, and the bread bakes


 for an hour while she sits by the hearth, from time to time turning the


 handle on her wheel bellows--which makes a draft of air come up through the


 tiny hole under the coals, bring them to life with a golden glow. At just


 the right minute she brushes the hot coals off the cover, lowers the crane


 to catch the handle of the pot and swings it away from the fire.


      Out comes a perfectly baked, crusty loaf, fragrant and golden "and


 good enough for the likes of me," says my dear friend, Maggie Murphy.


 SOURCE: Pepperidge Farm Cookbook From the cookbook files of: Deidre-Anne


 Penrod, FGGT98B on *P, J.PENROD3 on GEnie


 


 File ftp://ftp.idiscover.co.uk/pub/food/mealmaster/recipes/mmdja006.zip