How do you make Irish soda bread?!
How do you make Irish soda bread?
Answers:
This is the basic Irish Soda Bread recipe that i learnt in Culinary Arts school:
5 cups sifted all-purpose unbleached flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 pound (1 stick) butter
2 1/2 cups mixed light and dark raisins, soaked in water for 15 to 20 minutes and drained
3 tablespoons caraway seeds
2 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 large egg, beaten
Preheat to 350 degrees F. Generously butter 2 (9 by 5-inch) bread pans.
Stir together the sifted flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Cut in the butter and mix very thoroughly with your hands until it gets grainy. Stir in raisins and caraway seeds.
Add the buttermilk and egg to the flour mixture. Stir until well moistened. Shape dough into 2 loaves and place in the pans.
Bake for 60min .Cool in the pans for 3 to 5 minutes.
with an irish soda bread maker.
4 cups plain flour 1tsp salt 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp sugar (optional) 2 cups buttermilk or sour milk
sieve dry ingredients into a large bowl. Scoop up handfuls and allow to drop back into the bowl to aerate the mix. Add enough buttermilk to make a soft dough. Now work quickly, as the buttermilk and soda are already reacting. Knead the dough lightly - too much handling will toughen it, too little & it won't rise! Form a round loaf about as thick as your fist. Put on a lightly floured baking sheet, & cut a cross in the top with a floured knife. Bake on the top oven shelf at 230 degrees C for 30-45 mins. When baked, it should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.
Holey Cow! There's trillions of soda bread recipes on Google.
I made 12 loaves today myself (Chocolate-cherry, Chocolate stout, Honey oat, and orange cranberry), all variations on the same basic recipe, which is:
4 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
Mix dry ingredients; cut in butter until mixture feels like coarse cornmeal. To this mixture, add:
1 cup currants (or raisins)
1 1/3 cup buttermilk
work until a sticky dough forms, then turn out onto a floured board and knead for about 2 minutes. Divide the dough and shape each half into a round. Slash a shallow X in the top of each. Bake on a cookie sheet or stone at 350F for 1 hour, or until lightly browned.
This is a sweeter recipe than most, but it's my favorite because it's divine with breakfast, for a less sweet loaf, halve or quarter the amount of sugar. ^_~
Cheddar Soda Bread
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
2 cups lightly packed grated Sharp or Extra Sharp Cheddar
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
Method
Heat oven to 375°. Coat a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray.
In large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add butter and work in with fingertips until pieces mixture looks crumbly. Add cheese and toss to combine.
In small bowl, whisk together buttermilk and egg. Add to flour mixture and stir until well combined.
Turn dough out onto floured surface. Knead several times, then shape into smooth ball. Transfer to prepared baking sheet.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden and skewer inserted in center comes out clean. Serve warm or at room temperature, cut into wedges.
Irish Soda Bread
by Pat Friend
Traditionally, Irish bread was not "baked" in an oven but rather in a pot, known as a bastable, which was placed over the fire in the hearth.
Leavening agents were buttermilk and baking soda (bicarbonate of soda), not yeast. One of the "disadvantages" of this sort of bread, which in modern times we might call a "quick bread", is that it doesn't last very long so it daily bread baking was a necessity. What a treat we might consider that in modern times!
While the following recipe does take advantage of a modern oven, the traditional round shape of the loaf remains.
4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
2 cups buttermilk
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.
Stir the buttermilk into the dry ingredients to form a soft dough.
Knead the dough lightly on a floured board. (Don't knead too much or the final product will be tough!)
Shape the dough into a round loaf no more than 8 inches in diameter on a baking sheet.
With a floured knife, cut a cross in the top of the loaf.
Bake the loaf until it sounds hollow when tapped, about 30-40 minutes.
Yield: 1 loaf
http://www.allaboutirish.com/library/rec...
Brown Bread
3 cups (12 oz) of wheat flour
1 cup (4 oz) of white flour (do not use self-rising as it already contains baking powder and salt)
2 ounces of butter
14 ounces of buttermilk (pour in a bit at a time until the dough is moist)
1 teaspoon of salt
1 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.
Method:
Preheat the oven to 425 F. degrees. Lightly crease and flour a cake pan. In a large bowl sieve and combine all the dry ingredients. Rub in the butter until the flour is crumbly.
Add the buttermilk to form a sticky dough. Place on floured surface and lightly knead (too much allows the gas to escape)
Shape into a round flat shape in a round cake pan and cut a cross in the top of the dough.
Cover the pan with another pan and bake for 30 minutes (this simulates the bastible pot). Remove cover and bake for an additional 15 minutes.
The bottom of the bread will have a hollow sound when tapped to show it is done.
Cover the bread in a tea towel and lightly sprinkle water on the cloth to keep the bread moist.
Let cool and you are ready to have a buttered slice with a nice cup of tea or coffee.
White Soda Bread
4 cups (16 oz) of all purpose flour.
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1 Teaspoon salt
14 oz of buttermilk
Method:
Preheat the oven to 425 F. degrees. Lightly crease and flour a cake pan.
In a large bowl sieve and combine all the dry ingredients.
Add the buttermilk to form a sticky dough. Place on floured surface and lightly knead (too much allows the gas to escape)
Shape into a round flat shape in a round cake pan and cut a cross in the top of the dough.
Cover the pan with another pan and bake for 30 minutes (this simulates the bastible pot). Remove cover and bake for an additional 15 minutes.
The bottom of the bread will have a hollow sound when tapped so show it is done.
Cover the bread in a tea towel and lightly sprinkle water on the cloth to keep the bread moist.
One of my favorite Irish cookbooks is by Monica Sheridan, the Julia Child of Irish Television, called "The Art of Irish Cooking" published in 1965. It has been long out-of-print but if you get a chance to grab a copy, do so. She talks about traditional cooking without any of the "spicing up" that we see in modern interpretations of Irish baking although she does experiment a bit with recipes. Here is her recipe for "Brown Bread"
4 cups Stone Ground Whole wheat flour
2 cups White flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking soda
1 1/2 tsp Salt
2 cups Buttermilk
Preparation:
Mix the whole wheat flour thoroughly with the white flour, salt, and baking soda.
Make a well in the center and gradually mix in the liquid. Stir with a wooden spoon. You may need less, or more liquid - it depends on the absorbent quality of the flour.
The dough should be soft but manageable. Knead the dough into a ball in the mixing bowl with your floured hands. Put on a lightly floured baking sheet and with the palm of your hand flatten out in a circle 1 1/2 inches thick.
With a knife dipped in flour, make a cross through the center of the bread so that it will easily break into quarters when it is baked. Bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes, reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake a further 15 minutes. If the crust seems too hard, wrap the baked bread in a damp tea cloth. Leave the loaf standing upright until it is cool. The bread should not be cut until it has set - about 6 hours after it comes out of the oven. (personally, I can't wait 6 hours to eat fresh soda bread.)
Creating the soda bread of our ancestors! In my case, my mother's great-grandmother who lived in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary
I'll be the first to admit that creating a 100% exact duplicate of a 19th century soda bread is near impossible. However, after spending about 12 years of my life as a Reenactor creating life during the American 1860s for Living History presentations, I know it's fun to accept the challenge.
Anyone who has baked in different regions of the county knows that temperature and humidity will affect how your baked goods turn out. And then there is the elevation! And the ingredients!
Temp/Humidity/Elevation
If you are located in a very humid area with moderate temperature and between 200 and 500 ft elevation, you have come close to creating Irish baking conditions.
Ingredients:
Ireland produces wheat that is "soft" which makes it ideal for use with baking soda I'm told. Today "soft white" (SW) is used in making pasties and other non-bread items.
The irony here is that if you use "bread flour" for Soda "Bread" it doesn't work as well. Pastry flour or Cake Flour is the soft wheat used for Soda Bread. "Bob's Red Mill" is one brand that packages soft wheat for making pastries.
I have been using "Bob's Red Mill" unbleached white pastry flour (soft wheat) in recipes with good success so far.
Baking equipment:
The 19th Century Irish used a "bastible" pot for cooking. Basically, that's what we now call a Dutch Oven (nobody seems to know for sure why they are now called that).
I use a 4 Qt three legged Dutch Oven (sometimes called Camping Oven if it has legs) to bake soda bread. I have tried using it in a regular oven and over the open fire. The regular oven allows more precise control and makes an excellent bread.