The thought strikes me that in my last piece I blithely said that my eldest daughter Caitriona could cook brown bread before she was 7.
This is quite true.
In fact what is more to the point is that she could make the same bread before she was six.
I remember a night when I was working in Ballinakill House in Waterford when a customer admired the bread and asked whether it was difficult to make that I replied with perfect truth that it was not, in fact my daughter had made the loaf they were eating that very morning and she was just five years old.
In all fairness I now feel I must give out the recipe for the same bread.
It is an adaptation of the Doris Grant loaf which I acquired via Ballymaloe.
At the time I called it Ballinakill Brown Bread and as that is the title on the tattered copy which I still have I don’t see why the name should not stand. The only thing I will change is to give metric equivalents of the weights.

Ballinakill Brown Bread

1.4kg (3 Lbs.) Wholemeal Flour
1.2 Litres (40 fl.oz.) Warm water
3 teaspoons salt
3 Tablespoons Treacle
14g (½ oz.) Dried yeast

Fill a sink or basin full of warm water.
Put the yeast and treacle in the jug and add some of the water from the sink.
Stir well together and note the amount of liquid in the jug.
Leave the jug stand in the sink of warm water until it froths up well .
Meanwhile put the flour into a large bowl with the salt and mix well together.
Add the mixture in the jug to the flour with sufficient warm water to bring this up to 1.2 litres altogether.
Mix this well with spread fingers making sure that there are no pockets of dry flour left.
(This gives a wet mixture which does not get kneaded)
Divide this mixture evenly between three 1 Kg. loaf tins.
(Make sure these are well greased and place a piece of tinfoil on the bottom of unseasoned tins )
Pat gently with your hand to smooth the top.

Prove the loaves in a warm place for about one hour or until they reach the top of the tins.

Heat the oven to Gas 6, 200C, 400F
Place into the oven and cook at this temperature for 30 mts.
(If yours is a modern fan oven I would reduce this to 190C)
After 30 mts. Shake them from their tins and put back in the oven for a further 5 mts out of their tins.
Cool on a rack.