Man cannot live on bread alone but he cannot do without it, an English teacher of mine was fond of saying, before releasing his impatient charges for their lunch-time break. It is interesting to note, however, that the "staff of life" has been truly established as a staple of the Irish diet only in the past 150 years, since the Great Famine killed off or displaced that section of society which relied almost exclusively on the potato. An observer of Irish society immediately before the Famine noted that there were many people in the "less civilised" districts who had never tasted bread.
However, even for those who could not afford to buy flour, the straw of the wheat found a ready use in thatches and it has continued to be grown, though since Ireland joined the EEC, the bulk of the crop goes into fodder. But the record temperatures of the summer of 1995 meant that for the first time in recent memory, most of the national crop was of sufficient quality to be used for milling.
The centrality of bread in the diet of Mediterranean and Middle East people is evident in the Bible. In those countries coeliac disease, where one is unable to digest gluten, is rare, unlike in Ireland - especially the west - where this condition has one of the world's highest rates of occurrence. This is believed to be linked to bread's relatively recent establishment in the staple diet.
Factory bakers
Today, baking has been largely appropriated by factory bakers - to the point where frozen, part-baked varieties of bread are now distributed to outlets which can maintain constant fresh supplies by baking the loaves on site.
Indeed, for a few years before they made a comeback in more affluent and sophisticated times, it looked as if the small, independent baker would fall by the wayside as the big players churned out their ubiquitous sliced pans with increasing economies of scale but decreasing quality. The big rationalisation in the industry occurred in the 1970s and 1980s when historic outlets died off.
Today, however, there are about 200 craft bakers, catering for a market which has seen a comeback in brown and fancy breads.
The National Transport Museum in Howth pays homage to the days when the horse-drawn van was a common sight on the street. The competition in those days was no less intense, as a card on one of the exhibits explains: "One northside road with only 45 houses is known to have been served by no fewer than five baker's vans every day."
One of the most famous bakeries was Bolands, established in 1823, becoming a public company in 1888 and closing in 1984, but forever associated with the 1916 Rising. Also featured in the museum is a van from Joseph Downes & Son, of North Earl Street, and a battery-operated van from 1953 belonging to Johnston Mooney & O'Brien, which withdrew its last horse-drawn car in 1962. The towns around Ireland also had their rival bakers. Considine's, of Kilrush, Co Clare, celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, having first opened for business at the height of the Famine, when there were five other bakeries to contend with. Johnny Considine's business outlived the competition, stayed within the family and survived another generation of bakeries to become the town's sole craft bakery.
Local millers
Johnny had been a foreman in the old workhouse, later acquiring the baking business on the town's main street, and using the flour from the local millers, Glynns.
Two great-grandsons now run the business; their father, Tommy Pyne, retired with a service record of over 40 years stretching back to the Emergency years. He remembers the early 1940s as a time when the dough "was like porridge" because of the inferior flour.
It was all derived from Irish-grown wheat, much of which was grown in unsuitable areas because of the Government's compulsory tillage scheme. The fuel scarcity also hit bakeries hard in those years. Coal was impossible to get and a series of wet seasons meant that the turf was wet coming out of the bog. In fact, it was just abandoned there in the notorious year of 1947, when it was "pure survival" after a hard winter followed by a wet spring. The bakery's centenary was forgotten.
The Government allowed the forests to be opened to the public. The wood bought from the foresters had to be cut up last thing at night for the next day's baking. Mr Pyne remembers throwing everything combustible into the ovens, even an old mattress. He recalls the old technique of making "sponge dough" in a wooden trough from boiled potatoes, hops, barley and a little yeast, a process which multiplied the yeast.
Bigger operators
The skill came in useful when the yeast company later went on strike. A "sponge dough" would only use a few ounces of yeast while a full dough would require seven or eight pounds. The 1970s brought new pressures when the bigger operators moved in, flour was expensive and governments operated an unwieldy, bureaucratic subsidy scheme. "Will I ever forget it?" says Mr Pyne. "You had to claim for it every month and you had inspectors in your door whenever they felt like it, going straight through your premises, questioning every bag of flour in the place."
To cap it all his bakery went up in flames, and only the heavy machinery and ovens survived, minus their wiring. "I had got phone calls during the day to take on an agency and stay closed. I had been offered big money.
"I came out to the phone here. I looked at it and I walked into the kitchen again. My grandfather had it worse. He succeeded. It was not for me to throw it all away," he says.
Considines reopened after a week, thanks to a huge response from the business community, and the bread has flowed ever since.