Will the Real Soda Bread Rise?
The other day I was watching an epicurious.com video of a chef from the Culinary Institute of America making Irish soda bread.
As he cut butter into the flour-baking soda mixture and stirred in raisins, I thought to myself, “He/s making a giant biscuit or super scone.”
It turns out that’s exactly what the chef was making. In other words, he was not making traditional Irish soda bread.
A Web site devoted to soda bread called www.sodabread.info says in no uncertain terms, “The basic soda bread is made with flour, baking soda, salt, and soured milk (or buttermilk). That’s it!”
That’s all that Irish cooking authority Darina Allen puts in her soda bread, too.
The soda bread came about in Ireland shortly after the introduction of baking soda in the 1840s. The whole idea was here was a quick way to make bread when yeast wasn’t readily available. (This kind of bread, sodabread.info says, was common in the U.S. and Great Britain before then.)
Any way, so Irish soda bread was originally as plain as plain can be. Which might explain why modern untraditional recipes add all kinds of things, including sugar, raisins and orange zest. And why the bread in the above photo, from Margaret M. Johnson’s cookbook Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools has raisins or other dried fruit in it.
Below is Allen’s traditional recipe.
By the way, if you are looking for Irish recipes for St. Patrick’s Day, some good sites to try are http://www.bordbia.ie, kerrygold.com and irishabroad.com.
Darina Allen’s Irish Soda Bread
1 pound (3¼ cups) white unbleached white flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
12 to 14 fluid ounces.sour milk or buttermilk
Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Sift the dry ingredients. Make a well in the center and pour most of the milk in at once. Using one hand, mix in the flour from the sides of the bowl, adding more milk if necessary. The dough should be moist, but not wet and sticky. When it all comes together, turn it out onto a well-floured surface.
After washing and drying your hands, gather the loaf into a circle and gently flip over. Pat the dough into a round about 1½ inches thick and cut a cross in the top, letting the cuts go over the edge of the loaf
Bake at 450 for 15 minutes, then turn down the oven to 400 for 30 minutes for until the loaf produces a hollow sound when tapped.
