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BS: Irish Soda Bread
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Subject: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,olddude Date: 15 Mar 12 - 07:31 PM Well St. Patrick's time of the year again. Seems like every year I get more and more of my friends showing up for my grandma's recipie Irish Soda bread. Well it is amazing ... I made 14 loaves of the stuff and it goes fast. Here it is: 4 cups of flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp of baking soda, 2-4 tsp of caraway seeds, I use 3 tsp actually. 2 cups of raisins, 1 1/3 cup of buttermilk, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tsp baking power, 1/4 cup butter or margarine, 1 egg In a mixing bowl combine, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Cut in the butter until it looks like coarse meal. Stir in caraway seeds and raisins. In a small bowl combine buttermilk and egg wisk and stir into dry ingredients until moist. Turn it all out onto a floured surface and knead lightly until smooth. Shape dough into a ball and place on a greased baking pan. Pat into a 7 inch loaf and cut a 4 inch cross about 1/4 inch deep on top for expansion. Brush top with milk. Bake 375 for hour or till golden brown yield is 1 perfect loaf |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,olddude Date: 15 Mar 12 - 07:34 PM no kidding they come out of the woodwork for my soda bread. I get neighbors knocking on the door ... Ahhh are you making that irish bread again this year .,. thought I smelled it cooking LOL .. I make a bunch of it |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Stilly River Sage Date: 15 Mar 12 - 11:24 PM Nice recipe. Makes it worth heading to the store for some caraway seeds! SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,olddude Date: 15 Mar 12 - 11:29 PM You won't be sorry my friend it is outstanding |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: ChanteyLass Date: 16 Mar 12 - 12:19 AM I love that stuff. Now that I live alone I don't bake it anymore because I would eat a whole loaf in one sitting. It's addictive. I see it in markets and bakeries at this time of year and am glad it isn't on the shelves to tempt me year round. One odd thing is that some markets bake it and then put sugar crystals on the top. Like people need more sugar! I wish, though, that some place would bake it in muffin tins and sell individual muffins. I would love to but and eat just one. Luckily this year I am going to a "girl cousins reunion," and one of us is bringing Irish soda bread so I will eat only my share. (I'm bringing Celtic Crossing liqueur. Another cousin is bringing another hazard at this time of year: zeppoles for St. Joseph's Day.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 16 Mar 12 - 05:15 AM My mother didn't eat soda bread very often (maybe occasionally soda farls) but "wheaten bread" which is slightly similar inasmuch as it's another form of soda bread, but made with wholemeal flour. It's close textured, moist, crumbly and slightly sweet (in the way that goes well with salty things). She would slice it thinly and spread with soft butter (not from the fridge, the texture is too 'friable' to endure cold butter) and serve alongside a plate of bacon and eggs or just on it's own. As a teen I liked to bake and and she would always say for me to bake some wheaten bread as she liked it so much (it was hard to source in England years ago), but I never did, never had a recipe for it mind. Maybe I shall this March. I can't vouch for this lady's recipe (never having made it myself), but it sounds like she knows exactly what she's talking about: Wheaten Bread Northern Style Irish Wheaten Bread Ingredients (measures are by weight) 6 oz. whole wheat (or whole meal) flour 2 oz. plain flour 1 oz. + 1 tablespoon steel cut oats (or pinhead oats) 2 oz. Wheatena cereal (or 1 oz. each of wheat germ and wheat bran) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon honey 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 large egg 1 pint buttermilk Small loaf pan Method Preheat the oven to 375°F. Sift the flours and mix in the remaining dry ingredients (if you can't find Wheatena, you can also use 1 oz. each of wheat germ and wheat bran). Add the beaten egg and buttermilk and mix until combined. Pour the batter into a greased tin and sprinkle with steel cut oats. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 40 minutes. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Michael Date: 16 Mar 12 - 06:40 AM Oh come on Chantey Lass!... I don't bake it anymore because I would eat a whole loaf in one sitting...Just once in a while a small loaf doesn't do that much harm! Mike (who has now been tempted into baking one today) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Charmion Date: 16 Mar 12 - 09:18 AM My soda bread is made with half whole wheat and half plain white flour, and currants rather than raisins. Instead of cutting in the butter at the beginning, you butter the hot loaf all over as soon as it comes out of the oven. The recipe came from a nice lady named Frances McSwiggan who brought it with her when she emigrated to Ottawa from Northern Ireland sometime in the mid-1960s. I shall make some tomorrow -- must buy buttermilk on my way home from work tonight ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 16 Mar 12 - 09:34 AM Any of you US-Irish recognise 'wheaten bread'? Mum originally came from the North of Ireland - it seems the wheaten bread she brought back from trips over the Irish sea, may well have been a particular type of soda bread specifically hailing from that region. She also liked Irish 'potato bread' for her morning fry-ups: triangles of leadenly dense white flour and mashed potato, fried crispy on both sides and topped with fried eggs. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,leeneia Date: 16 Mar 12 - 01:21 PM Y'all have inspired me. We are having a party tomorrow to admire fluorescent minerals, and I believe I'll make some soda bread. I've never known what to do with the leftover buttermilk, so I experimented and discovered that a carton of plain yogurt works very well and leaves no leftovers. (Add a little water if the batter seems dry.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: gnu Date: 16 Mar 12 - 01:51 PM leeneia... got a volume on the carton? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Maryrrf Date: 16 Mar 12 - 02:46 PM I have made soda bread, eaten some, and sliced and frozen the rest to avoid scarfing it all down at once. I take the frozen slices out of the freezer and pop them in the toaster. They aren't as good as when the bread comes right out of the oven, but the toasted slices are quite tasty. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 16 Mar 12 - 05:51 PM Raisins and carraway seeds in soda bread? I'd just have flour and baking soda with milk or buttermilk if I could get it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: olddude Date: 16 Mar 12 - 06:53 PM try it McGrath you won't be disappointed mistake in my recipie it is 3 Tablespoons of carraway seeds sorry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Stilly River Sage Date: 17 Mar 12 - 12:52 AM Are you sure it is 3 tablespoons? That is a lot! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Michael Date: 17 Mar 12 - 07:29 AM 3tablespoons a lot? Carraway with you. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 17 Mar 12 - 07:47 AM I'd never heard of Soda Bread with Raisins and Caraway before and for what it's worth a bit of Googling reveals that it's not an Irish thing at all but an American style Soda Bread. So why the 'Irish' descriptor? At a guess I'd reckon that it is a recipe which the wealthier (you don't get butter, eggs or dried fruit in Irish soda bread) descendants of poor Irish settlers adapted from the plain stuff their ancestors arrived with? Incidentally, I recall reading a great little book about the multitude of breads that different European settlers brought with them to the New World, the author reckoned that bakers bringing their trade with them would keep a precious wadge of yeasted dough safely behind one ear, to keep it warm and moist, ready to begin baking with as once they reached land. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 17 Mar 12 - 07:53 AM This is the kind of soda bread I recognise and bake now and then, it's steamy and moist straight from the oven, but needs to be eaten up quickly or it goes rock solid: Soda Bread Ingredients 170g/6oz self-raising wholemeal flour 170g/6oz plain flour ½ tsp salt ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda 290ml/½ pint buttermilk |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Greg B Date: 17 Mar 12 - 08:33 AM Why is it always called "Irish Soda Bread?" Is there such a thing as "Italian Soda Bread?" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 17 Mar 12 - 10:23 AM I guess people from outside Ireland, particularly the US, call soda bread 'Irish soda bread' to differentiate it from other regional variants? Wiki advises us that you have varieties of soda bread hailing from Austria, Serbia, Poland and of course over here in the British Isles & Ireland. For myself I've never actually called it "Irish", it's just "soda bread". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: maeve Date: 17 Mar 12 - 10:36 AM CS- you'll maybe enjoy this: http://www.sodabread.us/ I appreciate that the linked site points out two different basic recipe heritages: cultural and family. Dan's is the latter, yours would fit in the former. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: olddude Date: 17 Mar 12 - 10:52 AM Well my grandma was Irish right from the boat and that is her recipe , so hence I call it Irish ... and since my last name is absolutely Irish I call it Irish ... you are right .. Stilly ... can't read teaspoons |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: maeve Date: 17 Mar 12 - 11:03 AM Hey there, Dan. I think the only point is that some examples of what you and I know as Irish Soda Bread contain ingredients that likely were not part of everyday life back in Ireland. Nothing wrong with either kind of recipe as far as I can see. We can knit pick it to death or enjoy the similarities and differences. Many home cooks glory in using what they have as well as they can. I wasn't living in Ireland at the time recipes like soda bread became widely used, yet I'd wager if a body got hold of something nice they'd add it to a plain old everyday recipe with pleasure. I like to play with recipes. I used to have many family and traditional/historical recipes; some quite old. No longer. Happy baking, everyone. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 17 Mar 12 - 11:18 AM Fascinating Maeve, I love food history. So evocative. Have another lovely book here at home which details the vast array of recipes belonging to the Jewish diaspora and how they morphed and changed according to what was available in different continents. An Australian "Irish Soda Bread" shows a very similar enrichment of of the original plain Irish variety to the US version. This one has melted butter, sugar and egg in, making it a kind of rich sweet tea bread: Australian 'Irish soda bread' |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: maeve Date: 17 Mar 12 - 01:27 PM It makes sense, doesn't it; as your condition improves, you have more choices in the making of familiar foods. Funny typo- knit pick rather than nit pick! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST Date: 18 Mar 12 - 09:11 AM Indeed. I think you can really get a 'feel' for the life and experiences of prior generations through the foodstuffs and recipes they used, much in a similar way to how we feel a similar connection to the past through the music that they would sing and play. When I was at school we didn't learn much of anything about the lives of the majority of 'common people', it was all kings and queens. Through both music and food and indeed crafts, you gain a profound sense of tapping into lived history, and there's a strange magic of human recognition in that. A world that is at once very sensually immediate and yet temporally removed. While I appreciate that lots of people enjoy doing things like touring stately homes and such, I find they fail to touch me: it's someone else's history not mine. Whereas the ordinary things which comprise the basic stuff of life as lived in the past and indeed present, affect me far more deeply. CS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: ChanteyLass Date: 18 Mar 12 - 12:37 PM The piece I had at my girl cousins reunion last night was wonderful, but it is so addictive I wanted more! As a diabetic, I try (but don't always succeed) to be careful of the amount of carbs I eat. And Michael, it seems a waste of energy to heat a whole oven for a small loaf of bread. Also, I don't even keep flour, sugar, etc., in my home. Too much temptation! When I was married, and later as a divorced mother raising my son, I used to love to bake. I would fill the oven with loaves of various kinds of bread. I am going to Ireland in the fall--first and probably only time. I am looking forward to "real" Irish food. Closer to my travel date I'll probably start a thread asking for suggestions and post the itinerary, so please don't comment here. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: gnu Date: 18 Mar 12 - 01:18 PM Well, I guess I am gonna have to give it a spin. BUT, if I leave out the caraway seeds, will it still live up to the rave reviews herein? Any way I can turn caraway seeds into dust easily? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 18 Mar 12 - 01:30 PM Caraway (I know it in seedy bread) is a gloriously aromatic baking ingredient. I'd go with the Caraway. If you feel the need to, first 'toast' the seeds in a frying pan for a few minutes and then crush to a powder in a pestle and mortar, before adding to the above recipe. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: gnu Date: 18 Mar 12 - 01:33 PM Thanks. Now I gotta buy a mortar and pestle. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 18 Mar 12 - 01:54 PM Err, got a coffee bean grinder or food processor? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: gnu Date: 18 Mar 12 - 02:00 PM Nope. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 18 Mar 12 - 02:08 PM Pair of hob nailed boots? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: gnu Date: 18 Mar 12 - 02:15 PM Nope. I gotta rollin pin. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: olddude Date: 18 Mar 12 - 02:48 PM Of course today for supper I am making corned beef and cabbage, as my mrs is heading home from visiting her mom. grandma's recipe and that I know ain't Irish .. but it is darn good stuff either way. And since and Irishman, me is making it , it is irish :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Stilly River Sage Date: 18 Mar 12 - 04:28 PM Okay. A few Mudcatters have received a copy of my friend Tom Bernardin's collected immigrant recipes in the Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook. Here is his version, American measurements. It was submitted by Judy O'Leary Anderson of Syracuse, NY: Nellie O'Leary's Irish Sodabread 4 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup sugar 4 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. salt 1 stick melted butter 1 1/2 cups raisins 2 Tbs. caraway seeds 1 1/2 cups buttermilk 1 egg, slightly beaten 1/3 tsp baking soda Sift flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar; add melted butter and mix. Stir in raisins and caraway seeds. Combine buttermilk, egg, and baking soda. Make a well in the center of the batter. Pour liquid ingredients and stir into flour mixture. Place in large iron frying pan, well-buttered. Use a knife to make a cross on the top. Moisten with melted butter. Bake in a 375o oven for an hour, or until golden brown and shrinks from the side of the pan. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: ChanteyLass Date: 18 Mar 12 - 09:59 PM Sounds like another great recipe. I had more Irish soda bread today at the house concert with Debra Cowan and John Roberts in North Stonington, CT. It was better than what I ate last night. Could I stop myself at one slice? No. I had two. Then I stopped myself. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: gnu Date: 19 Mar 12 - 03:05 PM SRS... that book is in my library. Thanks again for bringing to my attention. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Stilly River Sage Date: 20 Mar 12 - 10:59 AM I bought some caraway seeds this weekend. It only took three stores before I found them. I'll give this a try when I know I'll have a few people around to help me eat it. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: open mike Date: 20 Mar 12 - 01:51 PM i wish i had seen this thread...on st. pat's day i searched for hours to find recipes and i compiled one taken from several of them mixed together..had to take a trip to the store for butter milk. decided not to add caraway seeds--only raisins. it was yummy! a great st. pat;s tradition to adopt! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Charmion Date: 20 Mar 12 - 02:09 PM gnu, a rolling pin makes an excellent spice crusher. Put the toasted caraway seeds in a baggie first to keep them from flying all over the kitchen when the rolling pin comes down on them. That "Nellie O'Leary" recipe looks way richer than anything I've ever made or eaten under the name of soda bread. The batch size looks like two small or one large loaf, and it calls for an entire cup of sugar, a quarter pound of butter, a cup and a half of raisins, and an egg to boot? Holy cats! That's a tea cake, and not a Lenten one, either! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: BrooklynJay Date: 22 Mar 12 - 08:55 AM I am groaning out loud right now, because I wish for all the world that I had found this thread several days ago. I am a very good cook, but when it comes to baking from scratch, I can be (and usually am) incredibly bad. It takes me several attempts at a recipe until it comes out of my oven in an edible form. And, this past St. Patrick's Day, I decided to try my hand at making soda bread for the first time. I figured it would go well with the delicious Irish stew simmering on the stove top. Wrong. I've been saving recipes for over thirty years, and found one for soda bread that appeared to have promise. Nothing too elaborate, just a basic recipe that seemed appealing. Well, I followed the instructions just about to the letter, but ended up with a round loaf that was rock hard on the outside, quite undercooked on the inside, far too dense... as a matter of fact, if I had bored a hole through the middle, it would have made an excellent barbell plate. But, as an edible item, it most certainly fell short. I actually broke my favorite steak knife on it. Since it was of no use - other than as a possible doorstop or lethal projectile (think OddJob in the movie "Goldfinger"), it was consigned to the trash. But, since I absolutely hate to admit defeat in the kitchen, I will study this thread in minute detail and, more than likely, will make several trial runs between now and St. Patrick's Day 2013. Live and learn. Jay |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: grumpy al Date: 22 Mar 12 - 03:38 PM wish I hadn't read this thread, I want a full Ulster fry now |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: ChanteyLass Date: 22 Mar 12 - 09:45 PM Last night I finished reading Patrick Taylor's "An Irish Country Doctor." At the end there are two bread recipes. I won't print them here because they may be copyrighted. I just wanted to let people know they can find them in the book. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST,CS Date: 31 Aug 15 - 07:09 AM I just baked some Irish-American style soda bread and it's a lovely crumbly cross between traditional Irish soda bread and cake. Delicious just warm and buttered. I put in nearly all the extras you find in US recipes (fat, sugar, currants, orange, etc.) but I forgot the caraway!!! Quite disappointed about that as I love caraway :-/ Still, I will definitely make it again. Really easy too. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: CupOfTea Date: 31 Aug 15 - 04:46 PM My Irish roots are back a couple generations, and my "Irish Soda Bread" recipe dates to the mid 1970s, from a magazine touted as "Lily's Irish Soda Bread" from someone else's Irish gran's kitchen. Weirdly, it has no baking soda - it uses baking powder. It's made with raisins (1/2 cup golden, 1/2 cup black), an egg, a fair bit of sugar and LOTS of caraway - 1/4 cup. To solve the "what do you do with the rest of the buttermilk" problem, I started using buttermilk powder exclusively, and always have the powder in my fridge. It certainly would be fair to call this a tea cake, but I tend to make it for breakfast when I have overnight guests - regulars rather expect it. I also have the problem of being willing to finish off the whole loaf, and shouldn't. One of the nice parts about this recipe is the crust, and I realized if I made it as muffins, I'd have LOTS of crispy crust, and a much easier way to give away part of the baking. Last week I made it for my best friend. I ate two, gave away two, and he had the rest - the last 4 hit the road home with him last night. For those who have a problem with whole caraway seeds, it's possible to buy it ground. The local middle eastern bakery here in Cleveland sells it whole or ground & much cheaper than in a grocery or spice store. I'd post the recipe if I were home to double check that I have it from memory. Joanne in Cleveland (who now knows that 2 soda bread muffins = over 500 calories) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST Date: 01 Sep 15 - 09:00 AM 'It certainly would be fair to call this a tea cake' Although, ofcourse, in Ireland 'Tea cake' and 'Tea Brack' are called Tea.. things because they're made with tea. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST Date: 01 Sep 15 - 09:02 AM The Ballymaloe bread book will give you a host of good recipes. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST Date: 01 Sep 15 - 11:36 AM There is a version that a family friend used to make for my dad years ago. Unfortunately, we never got the recipe. It was a loaf rather than a round. It was dense, slightly sweet and contained currents - no caraway seeds. Great with a little slab of butter on a slice. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Raggytash Date: 01 Sep 15 - 01:45 PM Old Dude, tasty as your recipe might be it's not what the Irish in Ireland would call Soda Bread. If you think about it logically the poor would not have had the means to purchase currants or perhaps even sugar. Caraway seeds I doubt would have been available at any price. Various other people have put their own versions of Soda Bread on here, mine I am lead to believe is as near the original as possible. 450gms Plain White Flour 1 teaspoon Salt 1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda 14fl Oz of Buttermilk I doubt if originally the people has access to white flour as we know it, so a wholemeal was probably used. AS for eating it ........ well home made butter and SMOKED SALMON !!! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: GUEST Date: 01 Sep 15 - 01:54 PM When using currants and raisins you're really entering Spotted Dick or Fruit Soda territory. But as long as you're using bi carbonate of soda as your raising agent, you're making soda bread even if it is not what you get when asking for just 'soda bread' in your local baker's. Generic soda bread as understood in Ireland is plain brown bread. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Rumncoke Date: 01 Sep 15 - 02:15 PM Don't knead soda bread. Mix all the dry ingredients really well before adding in the liquid, then treat it more like pastry than yeast risen bread. My mother used to use ordinary milk and a dash of white vinegar, as soda bread was usually only made in an emergency. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Irish Soda Bread From: Noreen Date: 01 Sep 15 - 06:52 PM GUEST 01 Sep 15 - 11:36 AM - that sounds like my Irish Tea Bread recipe. Dried fruit soaked in cold tea overnight, then flour, sugar and eggs mixed in and baked. Good on its own or spread with butter. Keeps well too. I'll post recipe if you'd like. |
