Type Bread shape | ||
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Similar Bread, Potato bread, Soda bread, Boxty, Barmbrack | ||
A farl (reduced form of the Scots fardel) is any of various quadrant-shaped flatbreads and cakes, traditionally made by cutting a round into four pieces.
Contents
In Northern Ireland, the term generally refers to soda bread and to potato bread or cakes (potato farls). While soda bread can also be baked as a normal loaf, that used in an Ulster fry breakfast is made as farls (that is to say, flat rounds about 3/4 inch thick which are then cut into quarters). Modern commercially mass-produced potato farls, however, are often rectangular in form.
In Scotland today, the word is used less than in Northern Ireland, but a farl can be a quarter piece of a large flat scone, bannock, or oatcake. It may also be used for shortbread when baked in this particular shape.
Irish soda bread farl part 1
Etymology
Farl is a shorter form of fardel, the word once used in some parts of Lowland Scotland for "a three-cornered cake, usually oatcake, generally the fourth part of a round". In earlier Scots fardell meant a fourth or quarter.
Dish
A farl is made by spreading the dough on a girdle or frying pan in a rough circular shape. The circle is then cut into four equal pieces and cooked. Once one side is done the dough is flipped to cook the other side.