Iconic Mayo business had an unlikely start in 1951
A van from O'Hara's Bakery passes the iconic ESB cooling tower in Bellacorick in North Mayo many years ago.
I love to bake. I find it a very creative process; one that gives fast results and a wholesome outcome. I am not one to stick religiously to recipes but I know enough of the basics to generally make the process work.
Home baking is one thing but I really admire the old tradition of the local bakery. As with many traditions, once there were many such bakeries but now, we are down to just a few. We remain lucky in the Ox Mountain region, however, because one of those remaining is on our doorstep: O’Hara’s Bakery in Foxford.
In September 1951, Michael and Maureen O’Hara found out that they had just had a big win in the Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake. A ticket, which Michael had bought for his wife, was about to change their lives and that of their family... forever.
In what seemed an unusual move at the time, Michael decided to spend some of his winnings on a bread oven. He started baking bread and very soon, when word got out, he found himself baking for the locals. The rest of the couple’s windfall allowed them to establish a small family bakery in Foxford. Initially, the bakery was small enough for Michael and Maureen to know every customer by name.
Bread was central to the formation of early human societies. From the Fertile Crescent, where wheat was first domesticated, cultivation spread north and west, to Europe and North Africa, and east towards East Asia. This, in turn, led to the formation of towns, as opposed to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and gave rise to a more sophisticated form of society. Similar developments occurred in the Americas with maize and in Asia with rice.
Charred crumbs of a flatbread, made by early hunter-gatherers from wild wheat and wild barley, between 14,600 and 11,600 years ago, have been found at an archaeological site in Jordan. This discovery predates the earliest known making of bread from cultivated wheat by thousands of years. Grinding stones dating back 30,000 years, possibly used for grinding grains and seeds into flour, have in recent years been unearthed in Australia and Europe.
The great challenge of all bread makers is to get their bread to rise. The most common source of leavening (getting bread to rise) in antiquity was to retain a piece of dough from the previous day to use as a form of sourdough starter. There is also evidence that the Gauls and Iberians used the foam skimmed from beer to produce a lighter kind of bread. Parts of the ancient world that drank wine instead of beer used a paste composed of grape must and flour that was allowed to begin fermenting, or wheat bran steeped in wine, as a source for yeast. Interestingly, different forms of currency were exchanged in Ancient Egypt before they began using coinage in the first millennium BC. Until this time, they did not rely on silver or gold but instead exchanged everyday goods. For the poor, bread and beer were used to pay subsistence workers.
The invention of the free-standing oven that could be pre-heated, with a door for access, added hugely to the bread-making process, taking us well on the way to the type of breads we are familiar with today. The oven for baking these early breads appears to have been a Greek invention.
The big breakthrough came in breadmaking with the introduction of a more refined and more defined form of yeast. Thomas Peru of the Department of Biotechnology, University of Delft Technology, Delft, Netherlands offers some insight into this departure.
Of course, here in Ireland and in the Ox Mountain region, it was soda bread that held sway, especially in terms of home or traditional baking. Strangely enough, Irish soda bread was only first created in Ireland in the early 1800s with the introduction of baking soda, or bicarbonate of soda.
Bakeries, however, have always had a place in village life and the bread they produced was distributed daily to thousands of little shops flung across the Irish countryside. In the early 1950s, O’Hara’s proudly took their place among the bakeries of Ireland and it is now one of the biggest bakeries in the country. The family-run business speaks of their pride in their growth over the years.
The factory has grown, products have developed, packaging has changed, but one thing has remained the same: the quality. Despite hard economic times and tough competition, O’Hara’s have never compromised on the quality of their products. They continue to ensure that their products are made with the finest of ingredients and the greatest of care. The products are made by their family to be enjoyed by yours.
The company now employs over 180 local people and is the holder of several national hygiene and quality awards. They are also winners of over 20 Blas na hEireann awards, including Best Producer in Mayo and Best Producer in Connacht.
Their O’Hara family’s latest innovation is the production of a range of authentic traditional sourdough bread. This tasty departure reflects a few things about O’Hara’s Bakery: an acknowledgement of a more diverse Irish population, an acceptance of new cultural demands and an ambition to innovate. Try this sourdough bread, it is now available in local shops and it’s delicious!
There are 22 members of the wider O’Hara family currently involved in the business that is the largest employer in the area and one of the biggest employers in Mayo. O’Hara’s of Foxford have grown from humble beginnings to a place where the company today produces over 100 confectionery and 40 bread products to the highest quality standards.
What a lovely way for Michael and Maureen O’Hara to use their windfall, what a beautiful symbol: provide for your family and feed your community.
