Currabinny Cooks: Our favourite stout and treacle bread made better with oats
Stout and treacle bread is delicious spread with Irish butter. Photo: Bríd O'Donovan.
We have a long tradition of growing oats in Ireland. All the way back to before the medieval period, oats were used both for human consumption and also the major fuel for horses during that time. Always seen as the lowest of the grains, oats were used to make bread shaped as a broad, flat cake, and was also widely consumed in the form of porridges and gruel. Cheap ale was often brewed using oats rather than barley or wheat.
Perhaps our most famous historical oat-based food was the traditional Irish oatcake. A traveller to Ireland in the 17th century remarked that our general food was a thin oatcake which was baked upon a hot flat stone.
