Growing up in continental Europe I was aware of delicious and distinct breads from France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, etc. But had no exposure to 'traditional' breads from Britain and Ireland. The stereotypes and popular history I was exposed to would suggest that from as early as the 5th Century Britain ate a lot of grains, either as bread or porridge. But by the Early Modern period meat, dairy, and vegetables grew in popularity - but looking at historic data it appears Britain continued to produce vast amounts of wheat and other grains why through from the 17th Century up to the modern period.
So why, when I go to a British or Irish supermarket, is the bread aisle filled with baguette, focaccia, etc. Sure, there are also crumpets and tattie scones - but did they never have their own 'delicacy' breads? I know why we eat French and Italian bread (they're fantastic. I'll never complain about brioche and ciabatta), but why doesn't anyone, apparently including the British, eat British bread? Is it because they used all their grain to make beer? Is it because they didn't have olive oil to make enriched doughs to compete with French and Italian?
I suggest you ask yourself, are supermarkets the best places to be looking for British vernacular baking? And to what extent does the presence of French and Italian bread styles in supermarkets represent their role in daily diets?
Fashion dictates what is sold in supermarkets. French food has been a class signifier in British culture for centuries. French and (to a lesser extent) Italian cooks have been hired in elite British households and restaurants for hundreds of years. The presence of French and Italian breads in supermarkets is in line with the tendency of high-status products to become more widely sought after, with manufacturers happy to monetize public desires.
British traditional baking tends to be highly regional; many breads are associated with local identities and agricultural products. An example of this would be the Cornish saffron bun, which reflects Cornwall’s history of saffron production.
Many traditional bakes are also relatively small. Bannocks, baps, Cornish splits, bara brith, barm brack, pikelets, and Lady Arundel manchets are all examples of British breads that don’t fit the sandwich-loaf model.
Visit local bakeries that promote traditional specialties and you’ll find much more varied and British styles of baking.
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There is, in fact, a very British bread widely in circulation within Britain and most of Europe. However, unlike the artisan techniques used to produce something like a “French baguette”, the British equivalent is somewhat less brag worthy… at least if your value is in taste and presentation!.
In the 1960s, George Elton and Norman Chamberlain of the British Baking Industries Research Association in Chorleywood, developed a method of producing a packaged loaf of bread from a bag of four to ready to ship in about 3.5 hours. This was groundbreaking, as it reduced the time to bake a loaf by 2/3.
To put this into perspective you might have to understand what goes into baking a loaf of bread a little. Consider this - when you mix water with flour, gluten is produced. It’s true that some have gluten intolerances, going as extreme as full blown reactions (eg celiac). However, an artisan baker will allow that reaction of water and four to develop over a great period of time. Sometimes days. During which, either airborne bacteria or yeast will degrade the gluten. When the body digests that gluten, it’s less intense a process. Thus the negative reaction is less.
What I’m describing is what happens in sour dough bread - a bread which inherently takes many hours to produce. It’s why people with gluten intolerance can sometimes eat sourdough fine but struggle with other breads
Moving back to Chorleywood bread. What they gained in speed of production, they lost in nutritional value. This is partly inherent within speed (less time for gluten to develop organically = more gastric distress, also less time for natural minerals and vitamins to develop into a digestible form), but also the type of flour necessary (flours more suited to Chorleywood are typically more processed flours, with more of their inherent nutrition removed as a result).
If we look at an artesian loaf, it’s not uncommon to get combos of flours. Wholewheat.. white.. rye.. ancient grains.. and this expands not only tastes and flavours, but the range and amount of nutritional value. what makes this practical is the length of time invested in developing the loaf. Whereas with Chorleywood, is less practical.
There’s some interesting history, as recently as 2021. When a campaign to legislate the inclusion of folic acid into bread was implemented in the UK. The small print in fact applied to Chorleywood bread, which, as a consequence of speed, had removed the folic normally present in more traditional breads.
In fact, since the 60s a number of valuable vitamins and minerals are now legislated to be included artificially into breads, as a consequence of Chorleywood.
I’ll just wrap this up by saying Chorleywood has been an important part of addressing hunger in poverty. It might be true that it’s less the idealistic version of bread to an artisan baker, but those struggling for cash can buy a loaf for 40p and get the basic nutrition needed to survive. It’s cheap because it’s fast. In that sense, you won’t hear an artesian baker bragging about British bread, but it has its place in food history.
I'm going to rely heavily on Kelly's "Ancient Irish Farming" again, for Ireland specifically. The Irish climate is mostly unsuitable for modern bread wheat. There are lower-protein breads that can be made with Irish wheats. Today, they are mostly fed to cattle.
In 'archeobotanical evidence for field crop plants', Mick Monk notes that there is no evidence for bread wheat in and a medieval Irish context. That said, some law books suggest that bread wheat should be part of the tax paid to a king; and if the summer is wet, an under king should send to France for the wheat.
There are few breads mentioned in literature. There is a "tortíne", which might be from the latin "torta", the round loaf divided into segments that were found at Pompeii. A single piece might be "srúbán", because it's shaped like a pig's snout.
Saint Ciarán (Stokes, "Félire") was said to eat a "srúbán éorna" daily - an "oat-snout". Oat and low-protein wheat breads are pretty dense, like modern German rye breads. You could imagine they would have been much less palatable than continental breads, once they became available.
By the late 1800s, cheap availability of bread soda, and buttermilk (most people couldn't afford butter - most food was exported to Britain) made for a slightly less dense bread - the modern wholemeal soda bread that is one of Ireland's few breads. But the dense medieval ones are unmissed.