Top 8: The best barm bracks to enjoy this Halloween

During the annual Halloween hunt, we found excellent full flavours with an eye on tradition

The annual hunt for the Top 8 barm bracks involved lots of foraging for new entrants. Picture: Larry Cummins

Our annual Halloween hunt for the Top 8 barm bracks involved lots of foraging for new entrants and testing of last year’s top markers to see if standards had been maintained. Our new team looked for and found excellent full flavours with an eye on tradition — a bread that is yeasty (bairm) fruity (speckled/breac) with a little spice, egg, butter, flour and a pinch of salt.

If it is labelled tea, traditional or fruit brack, it’s unlikely to contain the traditional yeast suggested in its original name. Instead, it has fruit soaked in tea, with baking powder and baking soda used as the raising agents. But there are plenty of bracks these days that have no yeast and still use the word ‘barm’. We also tried those this year as some of the best had no yeast and we didn’t want to exclude their deliciousness.