Irish Bread and its Lessons on life

Across cultures and centuries, bread has often been the measure of whether a household is secure, whether a day will be endured, whether a community will hold. In Ireland, we have unique breads not found anywhere else. Not only do they look and taste different, but these breads also have valuable lessons baked in. I shall focus on four favourites of mine: soda bread farls, veda bread, wheaten bread, and potato bread.

Soda bread farls

Soda bread involves no waiting for yeast to rise and requires no oven. You simply use plain flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. The farls are quick to make on a griddle, though getting the mixture just right takes practice. I have watched my mother make soda farls every week of my life for sixty years, yet I still cannot replicate her bread. Now in her nineties, she continues to produce these delicious farls. She cuts the dough into four by rolling a small side plate through it — she’s the only person I know who does this.

lesson learned:

When you don’t even have an oven, you can still make bread. It’s been said that “Appreciation is yeast, lifting the ordinary to the extraordinary,” yet soda bread farls need neither yeast nor oven — and still taste extraordinary.

Veda bread

Veda bread is a traditional malted loaf most strongly associated with Northern Ireland. However, it originated in Scotland, where a baker developed a bread using malted grains (cereal grains soaked in water to encourage germination, then dried with hot air to halt the process) and malt extract. Veda is darker than ordinary bread, naturally sweet without added sugar, and soft and easy to eat.

Allowing grain to sprout sends it a message: “Time to grow.” That message activates enzymes which break down stored compounds, making the grain easier to digest. A seed must be buried — hidden and unseen — so that growth can begin in stillness and darkness. A dry seed is closed and inert. Water softens it; only then can it change. The seed already contains everything it needs, but it must break open to grow.

There are many lessons in this bread:

• Periods of waiting, obscurity, or difficulty are not wasted. Transformation often begins before anything visible happens.

• Growth requires openness. Rigidity protects, but it also prevents transformation. Softening demands humility, love, and hope to trigger inner change.

• True purpose unfolds through self-sacrifice, not self-preservation.

Wheaten bread

My mother makes soda bread farls in our home, but I am the wheaten bread maker. It helps that wheaten bread is quick and easy to prepare. Because it uses whole wheat, it retains the entire grain kernel — the fibre-rich bran, nutrient-dense germ, and starchy endosperm. As a result, it provides significantly more fibre, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Refined white flour has most of these removed, resulting in lower nutritional value and faster blood sugar spikes.

Instead of yeast, wheaten bread uses baking soda for lift, so it comes together quickly and has a tender, slightly crumbly texture. But without the oven, the dough remains unfinished.

Lessons learned:

Sometimes, taking things out of wheat reduces the benefits the bread brings. In life, keep it simple — don’t overcomplicate. Often, rewards come not from what you take out of life, but from what you leave in.

Trials refine us. Heat does not destroy the bread; it fulfils its purpose. Wholeness comes through unity, transformation, and service, and spirituality is expressed in small, daily, faithful acts.

Potato bread

Potato bread speaks of ingenuity in times of scarcity. Very few cultures make bread from potatoes, but some do so out of necessity when grain is scarce. The Irish are among the few who eat potato bread as a staple. Imagine, then, the absolute disaster of the potato blight.

This disease (Phytophthora infestans) arrived in Ireland in 1845, causing potatoes to rot both in the ground and in storage. At the time, the population — 8.5 million in 1841 — depended almost entirely on potatoes for food. The repeated crop failures, which came and went for seven years, were catastrophic. Around one million people died from starvation and disease, and another one to two million emigrated. Ireland’s population fell by roughly 25%, a loss from which it has never fully recovered, almost 200 years later.

Sadly, this experience is not uniquely horrific. History offers many other examples.

Lessons learned

When you don’t have wheat to make bread, take what you do have and make bread. If even that is taken from you, flee before you die.
When huge numbers of people flee their country, always ask why — and show the compassion you would hope to receive in their situation.

Flawed motherhood

Some people come to motherhood very well prepared. Either by inclination, exposure, or sheer experience, they enter this stage of life with a wealth of useful skills at their disposal. I had none. Not only was I the youngest in my own family, but I had never even held someone else’s baby. Probably other mothers’ sixth sense warned them that I was flawed and lacked the requisite abilities.

So, when my first child arrived, I knew nothing, had zero experience, and was terrified of the responsibilities that were now mine. I remember, in hospital, asking the midwife to put the baby back in his cot, as I wasn’t sure I could walk and carry him successfully at the same time. In my defence, new-borns are weirdly floppy, particularly their heads. It was my first day of being a mother, and it was evident to me that I sucked at the whole business.

There was, however, an abundance of love for this tiny entity, and the universe seemed to have swung on its axis. But as we left the hospital with this vulnerable little baby, it felt as though the entire health system was vastly overrating our ability to keep him alive. I really felt someone sensible should have stopped us.

Thankfully, he was an easy baby who slept, ate, and grew normally. Heaven knows how I would’ve coped if he hadn’t been so very reasonable. Not that I didn’t make mistakes. When holding my six-month-old baby in a queue at the nearby post office, I was ridiculously upset that he would hold out his arms and lean into any passing person. On some level, I assumed he sensed my total incompetence and was hoping some random passer-by would rescue him. In reality, he was just a remarkably friendly chap who beamed at the world with infinite good grace.

One day he would not settle. I tried changing his nappy, feeding him, winding him, and even carried him around to no avail. Exhausted and somewhat exasperated, I put him in his cot and let him cry. He was obviously becoming spoiled, I told myself. But his cries drove me to distraction, and I decided to give him a bath to try to settle him. When I undressed him, I discovered that the zip of his baby suit was lodged tightly in the flesh under his neck. That was the reason for all the tears. The poor chap had been in agony. The baby suit had zippers at the legs to allow you to change the nappy without removing the entire suit. My guilt was epic. Surely no one deserved a mother like me! Fortunately, once I freed the zip from his red, sore flesh, he didn’t take long to return to his normal, good-natured self.

I suspect that as parents we often fail our kids—thinking we’re doing everything right while inadvertently choking the very life out of them. It’s all the things we miss, mess up, or misinterpret. I suspect every child could construct an encyclopaedia of their parents’ failings. Thankfully, my children have shown no resentment. They remind me of the walks, laughs, and fun we had too. The truth is we all come to things in life either incompetent, expert, or somewhere in between.

The journey of life as a parent is awesome. You experience a huge love that erupts, volcano-like, when they enter your life, and then you get to accompany them as they learn new skills and abilities. There are some tricky years when they seek independence and weather the tumultuous rapids of hormones, but finally the adult emerges. If you’re lucky, you discover that they are a much, much better human than you could ever hope to be. Then gratitude becomes the only appropriate response for this epic privilege of having children.

An Ecosystem of Learning

Change is the end result of all true learning.

Leo Buscaglia

Learning rarely happens in seclusion which can be a barren environment. It thrives in a rich system made up of individuals, communities, and institutions, each playing a substantial role in nurturing growth. Learning is a verb (the process of gaining) whereas knowledge is a noun (the state of possessing).  Neither is attained to gain advantage over others rather they are part of our life’s mission. To learn is fundamentally to engage actively with the world, to think deeply and to allow curiosity and reflection to guide our actions.

Genuine learning strengthens resilience within ourselves, people, societies, and even safeguards the natural world. Just as diverse ecosystems are more capable of adapting and surviving, a rich culture of learning equips humanity to face uncertainty, fear, and change. It requires courage of us: the courage to confront what we do not know, to challenge old assumptions, and to connect local efforts with global concerns for both material and spiritual well-being.

The value of biodiversity is that it makes our ecosystems more resilient, which is a prerequisite for stable societies; its wanton destruction is akin to setting fire to our lifeboat. 

Johan Rockstrom

Learning also finds its highest purpose when it serves others. It should not result in arrogance or domination, but rather compassion, justice, and the betterment of the world. When knowledge is aligned with wisdom, it can inspire economies that protect the planet, communities that flourish, and personal lives filled with meaningful actions. Education, in this sense, is not about accumulating facts, but about igniting understanding and moral clarity.

Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire.

W.B. Yeats

Ultimately, learning is a lifelong journey. From birth to the final moments of life, we are shaped by our willingness to remain learners—open, adaptable, and humble. In times of rapid change, it is not those who cling tightly to what they already know who thrive, but those who continue to learn, unlearn, and grow. It is through this ongoing process that healthy transformation—within ourselves and within the world—becomes possible.

The purpose of learning should be the promotion of the welfare of the people…. True learning is that which is conducive to the well-being of the world, not to pride and self-conceit, or to tyranny, violence and pillage.

Bahá’u’lláh

True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.

 Humiliation is the cruellest of punishments because it destroys a person’s self-respect.

Ralph Ellison

I had travelled to England to meet my husband-to-be’s family for the first time and I was very shy. Meeting many new people is daunting at the best of times but the very first encounter with future relatives is definitely tricky. At a family celebration one of these relatives lent across and said “You’re from Ireland, please sing us a song”.

My father had been sent to elocution lessons, piano lessons etc and had a huge dent in the top of his head where a piano teacher had repeatedly whacked him with her large ringed finger if she felt he had forgotten to practice enough. The result of the lessons was my dad played the piano well and sported a permanent dent on the top of his head. The pain of these lessons ensured that he never sent any of us to any such torture sessions. As a result, even though we could ride bikes, climb trees and walk the tops of gates and swim etc none of us had acquired any musical ability whatsoever. 

My husband’s relative was sweet but persistent and would not stop asking, thinking that it was my shyness that prevented me from entertaining them. Finally, reluctantly, I launched into the Mountains of Mourne, a song from Northern Ireland. 

I got through the first verse when the same relative tapped me on the arm and said I could stop now. No one asked me to sing again and I began to suspect not having had any musical lessons was a dire omission indeed.

The next day was worse. A distant relative of my husband from the US decided that I needed my facial hair waxed. It was something she did regularly herself but a whole new world of pain for me. I was trying to be stoic but the procedure was torturous. When she’d finished I retreated to bed acutely aware of both my lack of singing skills and my abundance of facial hair.

The next morning my entire chin and neck looked like it had developed purple, red and white pimples. From the mouth down, I suddenly resembled the spottiest youth you can imagine. From a distance it looked as if I acquired a red beard of sorts. By now I had reached that place of resignation that only total humiliation can bring.

Looking back, I can laugh at my injured 25-year-old self. It was all no big deal. My skin recovered and I have become resigned to not being a singer. More importantly, all those relatives that I met are dear friends that enrich my life and have showered love on me for almost four decades.

The lesson learned is that we sometimes need to play the long game. To brace ourselves for the daily challenges that can seem horrific at the time, but in hindsight are no more than an amusing anecdote to life. We live and we learn many things mostly from others but also from our experiences. 

As a pensioner, I can now appreciate all those who have crossed my path. I am grateful for each and every conversation or interaction that taught me something. Even if the lesson learned was to be able to laugh at one’s self.

True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.

C. S. Lewis