A blaa with two As is made with fresh dough/
About the size of a saucer/
That's the right size, you know
A Man walks into a baker's shop in Waterford at 7 a.m. and says he wants a dozen. Standing over the counter he scrutinises each small, perfectly formed floury mound. They are 14p each, but he remembers when they were a penny.
He hand-picks a dozen soft ones, takes them home and tears a couple open. Yellow butter drips on to his fingers and oozes into the airy crevices of the bread. That's a good blaa, he says to no one in particular, a good, tasty Waterford blaa.
To the untrained eye, this breakfast, consumed in many homes in Waterford morning in, morning out, consists merely of a soft roll and butter. In Dublin they would be called baps. To the denizens of Waterford, such comparisons are sacrilege. This is indeed bread but not as outsiders know it.
The blaa is to Waterford what the hot-dog is to New York, with one important difference. They are totally indigenous to the city, although there have been sightings in Tramore and further afield, such as in Clonmel. Made in some seven bakeries in the city, they are eaten by families at breakfast, workers in local factories, children in schools and people nursing hangovers. For a tourist to come to Waterford and not taste a blaa is like coming to Ireland and not tasting stout.
The Summerland and Walshs/ made blaas for the real/
And the ones sold by Harneys/
Made a great breakfast meal
In Harney's bakery in Johnstown, Mr Liam Flynn has finished overseeing the morning's blaa-making. On Saturdays he makes 540 dozen, most of which are delivered to local shops and factories.
There is no great mystery to the blaa, he tells you. The ingredients are yeast, flour and salt. It all gets mixed up in a high-speed mixer, a divider cuts the dough into blaa-shaped pieces and then those are rolled flat and sprinkled with more flour before baking. Harney's use a 30-year-old rolling pin for this, but a rolling machine will do just as well.
Walsh's bakery in Ballybricken has been serving up blaas for decades. The manager, Mr Ken Walsh, estimates that around 30,000 of them are eaten daily in the city, which has a population of 55,000, and the blaa has helped sustain the small bakery trade.
"I can honestly say that none of them taste exactly the same. Some people only like soft blaas, others like crusty ones. Some don't like them too floury," he says. Other bakeries which make them, such as Hickeys, Portlaw and M&D, all have their own blaa. Even burnt blaas are preferred by some.
"You get them early," says Mr Flynn of the blaas. They do not have the keeping qualities of your average, large sliced pan, but a dozen donated to The Irish Times for research tasted delicious after a short spell in a microwave.
"Ideally they are eaten within half an hour of being baked," says Mr Flynn. "No two blaas are the same. It's a bit like Waterford Crystal."
Pity the tourists who go to the Waterford Crystal Visitors' Centre and look up at the menu above the display cabinet. Ham salad blaa, it reads. Or cheese salad blaa. More often than not, the tourists mistake the blaa for blah, as in blah, blah, blah. They think it means cheese, salad, who-knows-what, and with smiling eyes the person on the till has to put them straight.
But where did they come from/ did they happen by chance/
No, the Huguenots brought them/ from the far shores of France
Bakers believe that the Huguenots who came to Waterford from France in the late 17th or early 18th century introduced the blaa. It is thought that the blaad, as it was then called, is a derivative of the much flakier IT]croissant, which the French brought with them. It was originally made from the pieces of dough left over from baking.
Another explanation for the unusual name is that the visitors called them blanc, French for white, which was eventually distorted into blaa.
Local Waterford raconteur Mr Eddie Winberry has more blaa tales than you can shake a French stick at. A broadcaster with Waterford Local Radio, he presided over the first and only World Blaa-Eating Championship held several years ago in the Tower Hotel. There a man ate buttered blaas and plain blaas until the audience groaned.
"Waterford people are martyrs for blaas but eat more than four and you will be sick," warns Mr Winberry.
In the hungry 1930s and 1940s, he says, the blaas sustained whole families. Some very poor men had an ingenious ploy to get blaas without paying. Each evening they would knock on doors asking housewives whether they would like a dozen blaas picked up in the morning. At that time, the "baker's dozen" applied to blaas and 13 of the things would be served to them instead. The men returned the conventional dozens to their customers and fed their own families with the extras.
Waterford people, says Mr Winberry, would think nothing of taking pillowcases full of blaas over to relatives in New York or Australia. They are coveted all over Ireland where former Waterfordians live.
Some other blaa tips. They are best eaten with tea and should never be cut but torn apart. "If you gave me a blaa that had been cut with a knife and one that hadn't and you put a blindfold on me, I guarantee you I would know the difference," says Mr Winberry. "And the cut one would never taste as good."
You can fill them with ham/or a slice of red lead/
In the summer you could try some Dillisk instead/
If it had originated in Dublin, you could probably now buy a sun-dried, tomato-infused blaa or a garlic blaa or maybe even rye blaa. In Waterford, however, the make-up of the blaa has remained unchanged while what goes in them is entirely up to you. Crisp-filled blaas are a particular favourite of children while chip buttie blaas are eaten for an early lunch.
Mr Winberry says that red lead, a cheap pork luncheon meat, is still the favourite filling for locals. "Any Waterford person would give their right arm for a blaa filled with red lead." He says dillisk, a seaweed dried in the sunshine, stuffed in a blaa makes a really filling meal.
And now the blaa's time may really have arrived. The European Commission Food Protection System means that if registered the blaa would be protected from imitation or exploitation. These are changing times, but in one of the few counties in Ireland where large bottles of stout continue to be in demand, the humble blaa reigns supreme.