`Love, peace and courage is what the three plaits of the challah bread symbolise," says Richard Hemmery, baker at David Brown's Big Cheese Company, "and the poppy seeds on the top of the loaf symbolise manna falling from heaven."
Well, who could resist such an explanation of a loaf of bread? His challah is a milk- and egg-enriched dough which means it is as sweet as cake: on the second day, when it has a slight touch of staleness, it makes the most perfect French toast you can eat, and there is no better recipe than that which Brown sourced from an American friend, which we give below.
The challah is only one of the breads Richard bakes for the Big Cheese. There is also a cracking Turkish bread flavoured with nigella seeds which is sublime ("It just begs for a fried egg," said a friend who tasted it), as well as a repertoire of classic French and Italian specialities: gooey pain au chocolat; buttery-rich croissants; excellent ciabatta and foccacia with semi-dried tomatoes; and a sweet soda bread.
Along with the range Hemmery bakes, the Big Cheese imports a quartet of part-baked breads from the German baking firm of Gramms.
"I believe the demand is there for better bread," says Brown. Previously, Dubliners had no alternative to going somewhat out of the way for a good loaf: you could get the breads from Wicklow's fine Stone Oven Bakery in outlets such as Kim Condon's Magills deli on Clarendon Street and in a few other locations everything from a coarse brown soda bread to a 100 per cent rye bread. Sarah Webb's Gallic Kitchen, on Thomas Street in Dublin 8 and at Saturday's Temple Bar Market, has consistently baked some of the best breads and specialities in the city for almost a decade now.
But neither The Gallic Kitchen and The Stone Oven has expanded over the years, and their reasons for remaining small and specialist prove there is a central tension at the heart of good baking, as Hemmery points out: "Every day is different with bread, because every factor is always changing, from the atmosphere to the water to the flour to your own temperament. That is why it is exciting, and that is why to have real bread you simply cannot make it on a large scale, because if you mechanise it, you lose that magic, that unpredictability".
The answer, then, lies in cities having lots of small bakeries, rather than the mega bakeries which have come to dominate the Irish market. Two further encouraging signs for Dubliners are, firstly, the decision of Olivier Quenet and Nicholas Boutin, of La Maison des Gourmets on Castle Market, to both buy over the Patrick Guilbaud bakery and to import each day the celebrated Parisian bread of the great baker Lionel Poilane.
Quenet and Boutin plan a small range of their own breads, from a series based on rye flour, to plain baguettes, a white loaf by special order, and their own pain de campagne. I tried this alongside the Poilane, and thought it left the Parisian bread for dead: much better flavour and texture, and simply much more fun to eat. Then again, maybe one of the bakers on Rue Cherche-Midi was simply having a bad morning with his flour or his atmosphere or his hangover: Poliane is normally a superlative bread, and while it is inevitably expensive, given that it is flown in each morning from Paris, it is normally a true treat.
Meanwhile, down in Temple Bar, the new Temple Bar Bakery has just opened in a bright shop at the named-in-Heaven address of Pudding Row, on east Essex Street. Jimmy White's swish, open-style bakery is unique, because "people can see exactly what is going on, and what you see is what you get."
Certainly, the sausage rolls and foccacia I bought here were both well made and extremely enjoyable, quite a feat for a bakery getting use to a wealth of new equipment.
Jane Jackman's French Toast
3 eggs
1/4 pint of milk
1/2 loaf Big Cheese challah, broken into pieces
butter
cinnamon
vanilla extract
icing sugar
Beat the eggs, add the milk and mix together, flavour with a drop of vanilla extract and cinnamon, drop in the torn-up pieces of challah to soak the mixture up. Melt a large knob of butter in a non-stick frying pan and fry the pieces of bread until they are crisp. Remove and dust with icing sugar.
The Big Cheese Company, 14-15 Trinity Street, Dublin 2 and The Epicurean Food Mall, Middle Abbey Street, Dublin 1, 01 6711399. Breads available Monday-Saturday;
Magills Deli, Clarendon Street, Dublin 2, 01 6713830 Open Monday-Saturday 9 a.m.-5.45 p.m.
The Gallic Kitchen, Thomas Street, Dublin 8 and Temple Bar Saturday Market, 01 4524912. Open Monday-Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
La Maison des Gourmets, Castle Market, Dublin 2 and Le Petit des Gourmets, Epicurean Food Mall, Middle Abbey Street, Dublin 1, 01 6727258. Open Monday-Saturday 8 a.m.-8 p.m.
The Temple Bar Bakery, Pudding Row, East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, 01 6729882. Open Monday-Saturday 8 a.m.-6 p.m.