Our favorite way to eat soda bread is warm and flavored with cold, sweet butter. (Credit: Mary Lydon)
Traditional Irish soda bread consists of flour, salt, baking powder and buttermilk. That’s it.
The baking powder needs the acidity of the buttermilk. But over the years, baking soda has replaced baking powder for many bakers, and the acidity of buttermilk was no longer required, although many still love it for the taste and texture.
The Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread – no kidding – tells us, “The early reference to using soda ash in baking bread seems to be crediting American Indians for using it to sour their bread.” In, “The oldest reference to a published soda bread recipe, County Down, Ireland, November 1836.”
There are endless versions, including white and brown (full white and molasses), including raisins, candied orange peel and cherries. Brown bread was initially more popular due to the price of white flour, and it has grown in popularity due to the sweetness of molasses.
Some are cooked on a plate or in an iron frying pan. In Ireland, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, bread was usually cooked in a “bastible”, flat bottom, cast iron pot with a lid and sometimes legs. It was suitable for an open turf (or what we call Yanks “peat”) fire, often suspended above the fire. To bake bread, it was also used to cook other foods, such as meat and poultry.
My version, cooked in a cast-iron frying pan, is third generation Cahirciveen and County Kerry. My grandmother added eggs to the original recipe. My aunt Nora loves butter. I added my own pollution – Irish whiskey-flavored raisins and currants.
Irish Soda Bread
- 3 Coupe All-purpose flour
- 1/2 Coupe Zocker
- 2 tbsp Baking soda
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 4 tbsp sweet butter, melted
- 1 big egg
- 1 Coupe whole milk
- 2/3 Coupe Raisins (mixed dark and yellow)
- 1/3 Coupe Currants
- 1 tbsp Dear Somen
- 1/4 Coupe Irish Whiskey
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Set the oven to 375 degrees.
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Butter and flour a 10 inch frying pan.
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Soak the raisins and crumbs in the whiskey for an hour or so, or put them in the microwave for 20 seconds, until the fruit is soft and plump.
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Sift the first four ingredients together.
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Add melted butter to dry ingredients and mix until it resembles a fine corn.
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Stir in beaten egg and milk (the batter will be heavy).
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Add the raisins and cranberries (whiskey and all) to the batter and mix.
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Sprinkle the cumin seeds all over the dough.
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Put the batter into the prepared pan and cut a deep cross into it with a sharp knife. (Tradition says that the cross is a blessing before baking, and an expression with the tip of the knife in each quarter frees the fairies from the bread they cursed.)
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Watch the oven after 30 minutes; lower the oven to 325, and bake for another 15-30 minutes until evenly browned. Remove and allow to cool in the pan. Alternatively, it can be beaten hot with cold, sweet butter.
Slainté!
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