TeaTime

Sharing the Culinary Soul of Ireland

Tracey’s Farmhouse Kitchen

The Stables, 52A Ballymorran Road

Killinchy, Northern Ireland BT23 6U

+44 7711 4848 50 • traceysfarmhousekitchen.com

A 17th-century thatched cottage on the shores of the Celtic Sea surrounded by the Mourne Mountains, there are few places more scenic to learn to make the breads of Northern Ireland than at Tracey’s Farmhouse Kitchen. After a quick 30-minute journey from Belfast, visitors pull up to a cream-colored cottage adorned with potted flowers—and a frying skillet—decorating the exterior walls. Tracey Jeffery emerges to greet them with a hearty Irish welcome.

Tracey may offer a relaxed (no weighing or measuring!), convivial baking setting and “less exact” style of bread-baking, but don’t let that fool you. She takes her bread seriously. For her, it’s personal, not only because she’s hosting you in her home, but because she’s sharing one of the most beloved, centuries-old crafts of her people. Soda farls, potato farls, and wheaten bread are quintessential parts of her culture. “People across Northern Ireland make these griddle breads every day, and I’m very proud of these breads because they are totally ours,” Tracey says. “You can’t find them anywhere else in the world, not even in Dublin.”

In Tracey’s Traditional Bread Making class, you’ll bake in the very kitchen that Tracey enjoys meals with her two sons and husband, who lovingly restored and converted the farmhouse into a family home that now doubles as a cookery school and a tearoom. As Tracey fires up the griddle, it quickly becomes apparent that this teacher is particularly sharp—she has memorized and is

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