Irish Soda Bread is a popular bread served in the days leading up to St Patrick’s Day around the world. It was introduced in the late 1830s when bicarbonate soda was brought to the U.K. The bread grew in popularity, as a necessity, when Ireland was in its poorest state and when food needed to be made using basic and inexpensive ingredients like flour (mostly wheat in those days), baking soda, salt and soured milk (what’s been replaced by buttermilk in today’s recipes).
This past weekend, my fiend Marge posted an awesome picture of a freshly baked loaf of Irish soda bread and it enticed me to get in the kitchen and make one too. She uses the same recipe every year around St Patrick’s Day, Ina Garten’s Irish Soda Bread recipe.
I made a couple changes to the recipe:
- I used 1 ½ teaspoons of baking soda for a bit more soda taste
- I used half golden raisins and half red currants instead of only currants as I love the look of golden raisins in bread
- I baked the bread for 50 minutes and it was perfectly-done
Note: while the recipe said the batter would be “very wet”, mine wasn’t. It was moist and instead of kneading it on the counter with more flour, which would have made the load way too dry, I gave the dough a few kneads by hand in the bowl it was mixed in and then simply plopped it on my baking sheet – saved a step and I feel it spared me from an overly-dry bread. Also, while the recipe calls for you to cut an X in the dough prior to baking, us Catholics know it’s really a cross, not an X 😊.
I had a delicious slice with dinner which consisted of my Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup and it was awesome.
Hope you try baking a loaf!
Veronique
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