Tuesday 31 January 2017

The Bread Bible - Irish Soda Bread

My only experience of Irish Soda Bread was many years ago during my mother's 'ye olde English baking' phase (inspired by Jane Grigson's English Cookery as I remember). During this time my brothers and I enjoyed homemade muffins, crumpets, suet pudding, lardy cake and other olde gems, including the Irish soda bread. I remember the soda bread being pretty stodgy and possibly a bit dry (sorry Mum). 

This recipe for Irish Soda Bread from the Bread Bible bears little resemblance to the bread I remember. Rose has added sultanas and a small amount of sugar that make this bread more like a large dense scone. I love a dense carbohydrate, and if it's threaded with sultans and slathered with some butter, even more so. This was very easy to make and nice to eat. 


I didn't soak the sultanas in whisky since I didn't have any, plus I quite like my 'dead flies' a bit chewy rather than soft. I also undercooked it a smidgen and forgot to slash the top of the loaf before I put it in the oven but I was pretty happy with the result anyway.


I still have a few breads to make to catch up with the Bread Bible Bakers' schedule. Next up is the Basic Hearth Bread.

3 comments:

  1. it is absolutely perfect! so glad you liked it. i sure liked your sense of humor about it--dead flies indeed. my husband thinks prefers the brown ones no doubt bc of the color, but when i gave him a blind taste test he actually preferred the golden ones. now he says that wasn't true. but blind is blind.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Entertaining post as always and your soda bread looks wonderful, chewy "dead flies" and all.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh how I've missed your posts!!! Now seeing this soda bread makes me want another.

    ReplyDelete