When St. Patrick’s Day comes around, I know most people think of Corn Beef and Cabbage for dinner.  We are not big fans of beef at our house so I decided to look for “Traditional Irish Food” hoping to find a soup or side I could prepare and found this recipe for Irish Soda Bread.   You can find this recipe and also many interesting facts about Irish food and culture at this website: http://www.sodabread.info/

This recipe is very simple with few ingredients.  In the past most people were able to have these ingredients in their possession and so this is a common white soda bread recipe.

All-Purpose Flour

Baking Soda

Salt

Buttermilk (Soured Milk)

Be sure to pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees and have on hand two cake pans, about 8 – 10 inches in diameter.  Also, butter or oil for greasing.

You can mix this by hand or in a bread machine, but I have used my Kitchen-Aid!  Love it!

Also, you will need to sift all the dry ingredients together before adding the buttermilk.  I have put a sieve on top of my bowl for this purpose.

You will need 4 Cups of flour

Here they, are all 4 Cups

Then add 1 tsp. of Soda to the flour

1 tsp. of Salt

Then sift into your mixing bowl

Now add 14 oz. of Buttermilk

And mix, but not for too long!  Only until it is mixed well together.  The Baking Soda acts as the rising agent in the bread, there is no yeast, so by over mixing you will allow the gases from the soda to escape.

When it is ready it will look like this

Then in your cake pan add a little butter or oil and grease it up.  I’m not really sure what I was thinking here, I don’t need that much butter and I don’t need that big of a pan, but it worked.

Butter makes everything better, don’t it!

Now, stick that lovely clump of dough into the center of the pan and…

Take a knife and cut into the top a criss-cross

Like this

Then cover with another cake pan and stick into your 425 degree oven for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes remove the top cake pan and continue to let it cook for another 15 minutes.

Doesn’t it look beautiful?  Just like at the store.

Hi, baby soda bread.  So warm and lovely, are you ready for me to eat you?

Now you should know that it is a good idea to let this bread sit for about 15 – 20 minutes it will continue to bake on the inside and then cool.

Also, it will spoil pretty fast if it isn’t eaten in the first day, so be sure to cover it and even put it in the fridge if you want to keep it fresh longer.

Cut it open and steam rises from it.

Then I made a Traditional Irish Lamb Stew!  It made this bread taste so good.  Well, I said it above about beef, but we just don’t eat a lot of meat at our house, mostly chicken, so lamb was quite the treat.

But I want to tell you a secret…do you want to hear it?  Well, come a little closer…

Little closer,

Um, this bread isn’t really my favorite, it tastes like a dried biscuit.

But I really wanted to do something “Irish” and something “Traditional” and this sounded like something easy to do, so hear it is.  Other recipes you may be interested in that are not so traditional but much better tasting are:

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/irish-soda-bread

http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/breads/irish-soda-bread-4/

It is always fun to try something new!  Baking is one of my passions and so is eating!