Irish Soda Bread is a quick and easy bread recipe that is perfect for St. Patrick's Day. This bread is made with flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk, and is traditionally baked in a round loaf.
You will need somewhere between these two amounts of buttermilk,depending on how much liquid your flour tends to absorb.
Try to avoidusing regular milk: if you must, use baking powder instead of bicarbonateof soda.
Lightly grease a heavy skillet (if making soda farl, theflat version of soda bread) or preheat the oven to 450 F (if making sodacake, the round, more breadlike version.
) Sift the dry ingredientstogether into a large bowl; make sure the soda is evenly distributed.
Makea well in the center of the dry mixture and add about half the buttermilk.
Stir until you have a raggy dough that is very squashy but which looksmore or less dry.
Add more liquid sparingly until you achieve thistexture.
Blend until all the flour has achieved this consistency; thenturn out immediately onto a lightly floured board and knead for no morethan a minute or a minute and a half.
Overkneading makes this breadvery tough, and it's very easy to overdo it.
If making soda cake, shapethe dough into a circle about 8-9 inches across and about an inch and ahalf thick.
Cut a cross about on the top, about half an inch deep, andplace on a floured baking sheet.
Bake at 450 F for 45-50 minutes.
Ifmaking soda farl, shape the dough into a circle about 9 inches by one inchthick and cut into four wedges or farls: place in the preheated skillet,with cut edges about half an inch apart.
Cook slowly on the stovetop overlow-to-medium heat: it should take about 20 minutes for the farls to puffup and turn a light brown on the pan side.
Turn them and cook for another20 minutes.
For a softer crust on either soda cake or soda farl, wrapin a dishtowel after baking.
For more information on making sodabreadand its variations, please see the file SODABRED.
TXT included with thiszipfile.