St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner so here’s a recipe for Irish soda bread, a delicious, easy, and traditional Irish recipe. Irish soda bread is much simpler and less fiddly than other types of bread because it uses baking soda as a leavening agent instead of yeast. Irish soda bread has a really interesting and long history, which you can find more information on here if you’re interested.Â
Ingredients
1 and ¾ cups of buttermilk
1 egg
4 and ¼ cups of flour
3 tablespoons of granulated sugar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon saltÂ
5 tablespoons of cold unsalted butter
Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. You have a couple of options for pans. You can use a 9-10 inch cake pan or pie dish, a seasoned 10-12 inch cast iron skillet, or a regular old baking sheet, which is what I went with. Whatever you use, either line the pan with parchment paper, use a silicone mat or grease the pan to avoid the bread sticking.
Whisk the buttermilk and egg together and set aside. Then whisk flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda together in a big bowl.
Cube the cold butter and combine it with the dry ingredients using either a fork or your hands. This is a little difficult, but you want to try and break the butter into roughly pea-sized chunks. Basically, just keep smushing the butter into the dry ingredients until there aren’t any large chunks left.
This is optional, but at this point, I added one cup of raisins and mixed them in. Add the buttermilk and egg mixture and fold the mixture until it’s too thick to stir.
Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface. It needs to be really well-floured because this dough is incredibly sticky and will stick to everything: your hands, the counter, the silicone mat you put down because you didn't think it would need to be floured (mistakes were made). Knead the dough on your well-floured surface until any remaining flour is combined. If the dough is still sticky, add more flour until you can form a ball.
Place your dough ball onto your baking vessel of choice and score an X into the top with a sharp knife, at least a quarter of an inch. I found a serrated knife worked the best and the deeper you score the bread the more it will show up once baked.
Bake your bread until it’s golden brown and done in the middle, which I tested by stabbing it with a butter knife but you can also use a meat thermometer. The bread is done when the center is about 195 degrees Fahrenheit.
Remove your bread from the oven and enjoy! (I recommend putting butter on top of your slice.)
