Mar 15 / Erin

Tasty Tuesday: Irish Soda Bread

Look at me being organized enough to post a St. Patrick’s themed recipe before March 17. I feel very accomplished right now. Just forget the fact that we needed to make two separate trips to the store to get ingredients that I either forgot to get earlier in the week (buttermilk) or thought we had but didn’t (raisins).

Chris and I are both Irish. As a child, it thrilled me to no end to see my name posted everywhere around the middle of March, even if I didn’t know what “Erin Go Bragh” meant. I also vividly recall being on the playground swings in elementary school telling someone that my name means “jewel of the Emerald Isle.” I thought I was pretty special then, and I still do, I suppose. Although most sources say that my name simply means “from Ireland.”

Anyway, I decided to make something Irish this week. And since I wasn’t feeling the corned beef, cabbage and potatoes vibe, I went with Irish soda bread.

There are many, many different soda bread recipes out there. In the end, I went with this recipe because it looked easy and the preparation reminded me of biscuits. And I don’t usually say no to biscuits. You can get all the ingredients and how-to details from the original recipe, but I’ll show you how easy it was.

First you mix together some flour, salt, sugar and baking soda. Then cut in some butter. I secretly love using my pastry blender because it gives me a tiny bit of a workout. Then add raisins.

Okay, so I forgot to add raisins at the beginning, but pretend I did. Next you add in the eggs and buttermilk.

Mix it up as much as you can and then, if you’re slow like me, you add the raisins.

When the dough is just mixed together, you put some flour on your hands and knead the dough just enough so that it forms a ball. Turn the ball over onto a floured surface and knead it just a bit more and form it nicely into a round loaf.

I baked mine on a pizza stone, but you could use a baking sheet or a cast iron skillet.

425 degrees for about 40 minutes and voila!

I thought the bread was a little bland (perhaps it could be improved with caraway seeds, which is a common ingredient in other Irish soda bread recipes). But, I loved the biscuit texture in the quick bread form. The outside was nice and crunchy and the inside was warm and chewy. And it made my kitchen smell good. And it didn’t call for yeast, which outsmarts me every time.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! May the luck of the Irish be with you…