You Only Need A Few Ingredients For Classic Irish Potato Bread (Including This Leftover Side Dish)

Imagine a bread with the griddled texture of a pancake and the fluffy richness of mashed potatoes. This is not some carbohydrate-obsessive's impossible fantasy, but an Irish staple called farl: a potato bread that can be whipped up quickly and easily with only a few ingredients, including a leftover side dish that may be sitting in your refrigerator right now.

Similar to Scotland's "tattie scones," farls were embraced in Ireland as a delicious, uncomplicated way to use up leftover mashed potatoes. They also do not require yeast, which was historically not used in Irish baking because the country's climate only supported soft wheat, which could not be yeast-leavened (a factor that also accounts for the frugal origins of Irish soda bread). 

At their simplest, farls are a combination of mashed potatoes, flour, butter, and salt, which is formed into a dough, carved into square or triangular slices, and fried. When making your mash, use starchy potatoes like Russets, Roosters, and Maris Piper to achieve a fluffy texture, and don't go overboard with the butter, as the potato needs to be firm enough to hold together. After stirring your other ingredients into the mash, knead it on a floured surface until the dough is sticky and homogenous. With a rolling pin, flatten it into a circle (making sure not to roll it out too thin), then cut it into slices. Sprinkle more flour in a dry skillet, and cook the farls until golden-brown on each side. If you prefer your farls slightly crispy, they can then be briefly refried in oil.

A good potato farl doesn't need to be overcomplicated and is perfectly satisfying when served warm and spread with butter. That said, farls are sometimes included in variations on the full Irish breakfast, which, as you'll probably have guessed, is Ireland's version of the famously hearty full English breakfast. However, don't make the mistake of thinking farls need to be restricted to your morning meal; they can be enjoyed as part of lunch and dinner, and make an excellent accompaniment to smoked salmon or a mushroom cream sauce.

Another neat thing about farl is that any customization you make to your mashed potatoes — the inclusion of garlic, cheese, or scallions, for example — will carry over to the fried potato bread you make out of it. If you're in the mood for another easily modified yet slightly more elaborate Irish classic that also utilizes leftover mashed potato, check out our recipe for Irish potato cakes, which veer closer to pancakes than bread thanks to the inclusion of egg.