Why is the white bread in Ireland so dire?

It is definitely better in other European countries alright. The only decent white bread I've tried here is Staffords. It's not amazing but its a lot better than Brennan's and Pat The Baker.

I did, it's the typical moany self loathing 'everything Ireland is shite' rubbish.

No better summed up than picking something innocuous like bread and going off on one.

Keep the dire people occupied with dire bread and dire circuses.

That's very complicated.

Sorry, but this is indeed very true. I'm from Spain, and the bread available in general Irish supermarkets (and local shops/Spars) is far from satisfactory (and quite expensive too). Only a few local bakeries offer decent bread, albeit at a minimum of 4€ per loaf or baguette, which feels like a rip-off. Having said that, I must confess that grocery prices in Spain or France have risen to the point where the final bill is comparable to what we pay here. This is particularly shocking considering that regular salaries are much lower in southern Europe.

None of that see through ham from Denny’s

I stayed in Germany with work for a month every 3 months for 5 years. The bread was so bad, between industrial bakeries and supermarkets, I learnt to make irish soda bread with buttermilk. I used to make a batch every few weeks and froze them. It was the best tasting bread ever.

Get in there and make the stuff. I'm probably not your average bread baker having spent a career with chemical processes, instrumentation and PLC's, but the last loaf I bought was around three years back.

I have a mixer, but it rarely gets used. Soda bread is easy, quick and a traditional, excellent Irish staple, easy to start with the base and tweakable to almost any purpose.

Soda bread leads to yoghurt and buttermoilk production and lo and behold the instrumentation comes into it['s own as the incubator I constructed for the eggs does milk also.

Apart from that, sourdough is a work of art, easy, a few things to go wrong, but a living thing, a family member to share the home with. The sourdough starter can be dried and stored if you get sick of feeding it too.

The only problem with bread here is Odlums strong flour is a tad expensive and a high protien flour is a must.

Aldi have bread flour as does a Polish shop in Tralee.

like tea or coffee, if you want to do the equivalent of visiting a machine at a train station, buy shop bread. That goes for the UK as well as here, to have proper control get the materials and mix.

As far as a breadmaker goes, I tried one and wouldn't give it house room. I was not keen on the result and dinn't really have the time or inclination to work at getting the thing to provide taste and texture.

On a final point to anyone going the yeast and mixer, or knead it yourself route, Aldi and Lidl always stock yeast, but they can go quite literally over a year without having decent strong flour. Plain flour will work, but it isn't a good result.

Having said that, I would go for it before buying the supermarket stuff.

I imagine some of the higher end breads are nice, but I never buy them, there is no need, when it's more satisfying to spend far less and do your own thing.

Youtube has excellent material if anyone wants a good solid starting point for a very rewarding hobby.

I have a few drakes available for anyone wanting to dispose of the errors that are not salvageable in some way for the table. [A rare occurrence indeed].

I’d have thought Germany would have great bread no? Like France lots of local bakeries no?

I have never found anything quite like soda bread anywhere but Ireland.

Having said that, I wouldn't really search it out abroad because like that nectar Bass in my boozing days, I just know the results were not going to be good.

Bass was digusting in Ireland too incidentally, just in case I am giving the wrong idea, it was an English Burton brew that became as bad to come across in a pub abroad as an English person on a boozy weekend.

Germany has it's own take on things, I would never go for anything but what the local Germans were fond of.

Germany has great bread, it can be very distinctive. I certainly would have to be desperate for soda bread to want to go making it in a hotel room.

Being the only form of cooking appliance available, the use of a hotel kettle to produce soda bread would pose a challenge :-)