Good luck, I made soda bread a couple of times and used different recipes each time. Sure enough, it was "yucky". Mine was also dry, crumbly, tasted a lot like baking soda and had the consistency of dry biscuits.

Nope, I'm no help.....

Annie

Try this recipe. It was the best part of our St. Patrick's Day Dinner.

But I agree with Annie. Soda Bread isn't all that great.

Soda bread. Which someone aptly proclaimed as "underwhelming" in the line-up of quick breads. You'll find a traditional version below, but modern cooks have added all kinds of things to soda bread recipes and I've also included some of those for comparison (or inspiration - LOL). And a link to soda bread made into muffins.

Hubby likes a recipe I make for "Milo O'Sullivan's Currant-Nutmeg Soda Bread" because it's heavily dusted with coarse sugar that tends to get dark and crunchy (no egg in the recipe - just buttermilk). It's "saving grace", when you take the soda bread out of the oven, you place a nice big cotton towel (NOT terrycloth) over the cooling rack and you place the bread on the towel. Cool for 5-10 minutes, THEN fold the towel loosely over the loaf and cool completely. This is a tip I've found in many of the traditional recipes.

Soda breads are best made with a low-gluten flour. Soft wheat was all that was available until the advent of hard wheat in the late 1870's, so soda bread was traditionally made with soft wheat flour. King Arthur used to have "Irish Wholemeal Flour" available, which was a coarse milling of soft wheat that worked very well for soda bread. I mill soft white wheat for soda bread and I like the results better than all-purpose flour. Soft wheat helps the crumb to be more tender than AP flour. Because there is so little fat and sugar in most of the traditional recipes, there is very little to tenderize the crumb.

Because of so little fat, there is no fat to shorten the gluten strands, so don't over-stir soda bread or you develop the gluten and you'll get a tough bread. Just enough stirring to incorporate the ingredients. I'd suggest using a Danish Dough Whisk (also available at King Arthur). NEVER use an electric mixer for the job.

Traditional Whole-Meal Soda Bread was made with sour milk, not buttermilk. Today you find recipes generally use buttermilk, and even yogurt.

Traditional breads were baked with a lid on, modern loaves are not.

Traditional Irish Soda Bread
(source: Malachi McCormick's IRISH COUNTRY COOKING)

4 c. unbleached white flour
1 t. baking soda
1 pinch salt
1-1/2 c. sour milk

Preheat oven to 400F.

Mix well the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Make a hole in the middle and, with a wooden spoon, vigorously stir in the sour milk, to make a thickish dough, not wet. Mix well and then turn the dough out onto a floured board. With your hands shape it into a round cake about 2-inches high and 8-inches in diameter.

Warm an 8-inch cast iron pot in the oven for about 3 minutes. take it out and grease it. Place the "cake" in the pot. (If you don't have a cast iron pot, a round 8-inch cake pan, lined with wax paper and covered with a lid. will do quite well.) Using a wet knife, make a crosscut on the top of the cake. Put a lid on the pot and bake in the oven 40-minutes

When it's baked, take the bread out of the pot and wrap in a clean tea towel to cool for about 5-6 hours.
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Modern versions that are tender counterparts to the traditional soda bread, and thoroughly modern ingredients....

Lilly's Irish Soda Bread
(Source: Lily Sullivan, a native of County Clare living in Wisconsin)

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a cast iron skillet or 9" round cake pan.

3 c. unbleached white flour
2/3 c. sugar
1 T. baking powder
1 t. salt
1 c. black and white raisins
1/4 c. caraway seeds
1-1/2 c. buttermilk
2 eggs
2 T. corn oil or 6 T. margarine

Mix dry ingredients. Blend liquid ingredients, add to dry, and mix thoroughly. Add caraway seeds and raisins. Pour into pan, shape into a round loaf, and cut a deep cross in the top. Bake at 350°F for 40-45 minutes.
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Landmark Irish Soda Bread
(Dick Harvey, owner of New York City's Landmark Tavern)

Preheat oven to 325°F and grease a baking sheet.

2-1/2 lbs. flour
2 T. ground nutmeg
2 T. ground cinnamon
2-1/2 T. baking powder
3/4 lb. sugar
5 large whole eggs
1-1/2 c. milk
Raisins (optional)

Sift together flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking powder and sugar. When blended, add raisins and mix through flour.

Beat the eggs and milk together throughly, then add to above mixture and work into dough.

Make small loaves 8-10 and bake at 325°F for 25-30 minutes. Serve warm.

-Grainlady

LPink, if you can make scones you can make biscuits. They are basically the same only one is usually sweet. Same technique for both.

Ann

Thanks for the tips Grainlady! I'm not sure if I can get soft wheat flour anywhere around here. Is it anything like cake flour? I have whole wheat pastry flour, but not white.

I was going to use yogurt instead of buttermilk, because that's what I have around. Will that make a difference? I can use sour milk instead. I don't usually have buttermilk around the house. I have some dried buttermilk but I've heard that is not very good for this type of bread.

Yes Ann it does seem odd that scones don't intimidate me like biscuits do. But my biggest issue with any of this baking stuff is rolling and shaping things. That's why pies intimidate me. With scones, I just pat the dough into a big circle and then cut it up into triangles. With biscuits, it's a little more rolling and then cutting into circles with a biscuit cutter or some such thing. Me and rolling pins do not get along. I usually make those Bisquick drop biscuits when I want biscuits. I seriously lack skill and patience for food that needs to be arranged or shaped. Plus my kitchen has miniscule counter space so I rarely have enough free to roll something out on. That's why my specialties are soup, stir fries and pasta. And canning. Hack it up and cook it up is my culinary motto!! I only make bread now because Ohiomom sent me a bread maker. I never take it out of the machine, I just make versions that taste good made by the machine the whole way. Muffins and quick breads I do all the time.

I dream about a day when I can have a kitchen big enough to really cook in. I know I could do with just my 2 ft. of counter space, but it isn't very inspiring for someone who already doesn't like to fuss much with food. Actually I only cook because I like to EAT well, not for the joy of manipulating food items. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I sure like imagining what all these glamour dishes would taste like.

I love soda bread....but I make it with "stuff" in it...raisins, caraway seeds and sugar...
Sort of like scones in a loaf....without the cream!!
Linda C

lpinkmountain -

Cake flour is milled from soft wheat and is also bleached, which is one thing I avoid in flour (although King Arthur has a new unbleached cake flour available). Whole wheat pastry flour is also milled from soft wheat, but not so low in the protein as cake flour is. Using ALL cake flour (7.5-8.5% protein) would be a little too low in gluten for soda bread. I've seen soda bread recipes that use a portion of cake flour and all-purpose flour to lower the gluten level. Other flour choices would be Southern All-Purpose flours such as White Lily (which has always been the flour-of-choice for making biscuits for generations), Martha White, Gladiola, and Red Band.

Yogurt is a good substitute for buttermilk because it is acid enough to react the soda in soda bread recipes, an acid ingredient is a MUST. Just give the yogurt a stir to liquefy it (which breaks up the curds), and you can add a little milk or water if you want to thin it a bit. In fact, yogurt (4.3-4.4 pH) is more acid than buttermilk 4.5-5.1 pH) - the lower the number the more acidic the food. Sour milk would also work, naturally soured or soured with lemon juice or vinegar.

Powdered buttermilk is rather insipid, compared to commercial buttermilk. It just doesn't have that tangy flavor that is part of soda bread - BUT - if you want to use powdered buttermilk, you can use it to culture and make your own homemade buttermilk, and it will be nice and tangy like commercial buttermilk.

How to:
In a quart jar, place 1/2 c. buttermilk (commercial buttermilk or reconstituted buttermilk made from powdered buttermilk - according to package directions). Fill the remainder of the jar with regular milk. Stir well. Let stand in a warm place (at least 80°F - I place mine in the oven with the light on, as far from the light as possible). Leave the mixture until it clabbers - 12-18-hours. Stir when done and refrigerate.

You can take a 1/2-cup of homemade buttermilk to culture your next (1-quart) batch of homemade buttermilk if you use it within two weeks.

BTW - When making biscuits, once the liquid ingredients are added to the dry ingredients, keep mixing (by hand) to a bare minimum so you don't develop the gluten strands in the dough. I pat biscuit dough into a nice square with floured hands (no rolling pin) and then cut them into squares with a pizza cutter. When you cut biscuits into rounds, you have all that leftover dough which is balled up, patted out and cut again. Those biscuits are called "second cuts" and are generally more tough than first cuts because the gluten has been over-worked. So to save time and avoid second cuts, try cutting your biscuits into squares.

-Grainlady

LPink, you can cut biscuits or scones the way Grainlady suggested or you can also cut biscuits into triangles the way you would scones. For more biscuits divide the dough in half and pat out two circles and then cut into triangles.

Ann

L, I agree, Grandma never cut round biscuits. She either pinched off a hunk of dough and plopped it into the pan to bake, or she shaped a square and cut it. She didn't use a pizza cutter, of course, she used a large "butcher knife" and always told me to make a quick cut, straight down, don't "saw" the dough or it doesn't rise as well.

Sometimes she just baked the dough in a square cake pan and then cut it into squares after baking. I've never tried that but I don't see why it wouldn't work, it worked for Grandma. Elery says his Mom did the same thing.

Annie

I love Irish soda bread. It is somewhat dry a crumbly, that is what butter is for!

Thanks again Grainlady, for all those tips!! I have some self rising flour and I'd like to try that for the recipe. I know it has baking soda already in it, and I think it is made for biscuits so I'm thinking it might be good for this, but then can I follow the recipe and not use baking powder? I'd like to use half self rising flour and half whole wheat pastry flour. I'm going to try baking some this weekend.

I tried soda bread again tonight. It was, as we say in Yiddish, meh. Which means about what it sounds like it would mean. I used a recipe from Moosewood Restaurant Lowfat Cookbook. It called for one egg white, 2 TBLSP brown sugar, and 2 TBLSP oil, in addition to yogurt. I used half self rising white flour, and half whole wheat pastry flour. Not knowing what to do about the leavaning, (sp?) I used half what the recipe called for, because of the self rising flour. The bread is a little doughy, but the worst thing about it is the overwhelming taste of baking soda and baking powder. I might try this kind of bread again if I can find some soft wheat flour, but otherwise I think I'll stick to scones. Practically the same technique and just better for some reason, IMHO.

On the plus side, the Irish Bean Soup with Smokey Bacon and Ham was very good.

Originally Irish soda bread was poverty bread. It wasn't great. It was just filling.

If you like a little more "going on" in Soda Bread you might try this one. (No guarantees, LOL. Everyone's taste is different.)

I'm posting the Americanized version. I have metric weights if someone needs them.

St. Ernans Mixed Grain & Yogurt Loaf

3 cups coarse wholemeal flour
3 cups plain white flour
1/2 stick butter or margarine
2 1/2 US tbsp. sunflower seeds
2 1/2 US tbsp. pinhead oatmeal
1 US tbsp. brown sugar
1 1/4 US tsp. salt
1 1/4 US tsp. cream of tartar
1 1/4 US tsp. baking (bread) soda
1 1/4 US tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup natural yogurt
1 1/4 cups milk (approx.)

Preheat a very hot oven, 425. Grease and flour two 1 lb. tins.

Place the flours in a bowl and rub in butter or margarine until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Then add all the remaining dry ingredients, reserving a teaspoon each of sunflower seeds and oatmeal for sprinkling on top. Mix thoroughly.

Make a well in the centre, then add the yogurt and enough milk to make a soft dough. Divide in two, knead lightly and place in the prepared tins. Sprinkle the reserved seeds on top and bake 40-45 minutes, until the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the base. Turn out of the tins and cool on a wire rack.

Georgina Campbell The Best of Irish Breads & Baking: Traditional, Contemporary and Festive

Carol