As I travel the world going from one adventure to the next, the thing I most enjoy is visiting local bakeries to sample bread. An interesting phenomena I observed is that local breads in other countries taste different than the same bread made from a recipe in America handed down from Grandma who immigrated from the old country. I’ve come to the conclusion that the ethic bread recipes you find in American have been frozen since grandma immigrated while bakers from her home country continue to innovate.
Take Irish soda bread for example, while I really enjoy the American recipes handed down through generations, it doesn’t taste anything like the bread you get in Ireland today. And while I like the taste and texture of American Irish soda bread, especially the way it tingles on the tongue, I have to concede that soda bread in Ireland is better, although not as tingly…..and FYI, I’m not writing this after drinking too much Guinness in an Irish pub, which by the way is where you find great soda breads.
Here’s a quick and simple Irish soda bread recipe that not only tastes good, but is easy to make.
Ingredients
- 250 g Bread flour ~2 cups
- 275 g Whole Wheat flour ~ 1.75 cups
- 16 oz Butter Milk
- 1.5 tsp Baking Soda
- 1.5 tsp Kosher salt
Process
- Mise en Place – measure and prepare your ingredients prior to starting.
- Turn on Irish pub music (Amazon prime has a good, fun, and slightly offensive offerings).
- Preheat oven to 430 F (220 C or 200 C fan).
- Line a baking tray with paper or preheat a dutch oven.
- Whisk dry ingredients in a bowl.
- Add buttermilk and stir (do not knead yet).
- Place dough on floured surface and gently knead 8 times (no more, no more less; don’t know why but do you really want to risk pissing off a Leprechaun).
- Shape dough into a ball.
- Place on baking tray and flatten to ~1″ thick disk, or drop into Dutch oven and flatten.
- Cut a cross into top surface of dough (for expansion while baking and to allow moisture to escape).
- Bake 20 mins.
- Reduce oven temp to 390 F ( 200 C or 180 fan) and bake 10 mins more.
- You can measure when done by taking temp of center, done when temp is 195 F (90 C).
- Remove from oven and let cool 15 mins before slicing.
Note 1: Dough should be sticky when done mixing.
Note 2: Can substitute 1 cup oats for 0.5 cups of flour.
Note 3: Can brush dough with buttermilk and sprinkle oats on top.
Note 4: Can mix in pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, linseed or poppy seeds (~0.5 cups) for taste, texture, and of course health.
