Hi Bold Bakers!
In Ireland, we are extremely fortunate to have access to some of the greatest produce
in the world.
I was very lucky growing up to have a Mammy who taught me how to cook.
She made everything from scratch every single day which was pretty incredible considering
she had 5 children.
My mum always said that one of the greatest gifts you could give a child is to teach them
how to cook.
And that's definitely one of the reasons why I'm here in front of you every single week.
With my mum's permission, I'm allowed to share with you her traditional Irish Soda Bread
recipe so let's get baking.
So to make a good Irish Soda Bread, we're going to start out in a large bowl.
Now the reason you want a large bowl is because you're going to go in with your hand and bring
all your dough together.
Our first ingredient for our soda bread is whole wheat flour.
Now this is an important one because it's a brown soda bread.
I have a very finely ground flour here but you can use a coarser whole wheat flour.
That's no problem at all.
So our next ingredient is white flour.
Now for my Irish Soda Bread, I like to use 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 white flour.
Some people use 100% whole wheat flour, which is fine.
But for me I've never had success with that and I find it too dense.
So I like to lighten it up using some white flour.
So our next ingredient is baking soda.
This is the raising agent for our bread.
Now the one thing you want to make sure about baking soda is less is more.
Do not add too much.
So when you go to use it, make sure it's nice and level and that add it in.
If you use too much baking soda, you can actually taste it in your bread and it will turn your
bread a kind of greenish color so remember that.
Our next ingredient is salt.
Now it's super important when it comes to bread making because it gives the bread really
good flavor.
Once you have all of your dry ingredients in there, just give them a mix together so
they're well combined.
So I mostly use whole wheat flour for soda bread but I don't use it very often so what
I like to do is keep it in the freezer because whole wheat flour can actually go rancid but
if you keep it in the freezer then it stays fresh for months.
Into our dry ingredients, I'm going to add in some cold, cubed butter.
Now all you want to do is go in with some clean hands or you can use a fork and just
rub it into your dry ingredients until it resembles fine bread crumbs.
Now the reason that we do this is that because it does give the bread a little bit of a different
texture and makes it a little bit lighter.
I really like making doughs that you can get stuck into and you can feel what's going on.
I find it always delivers the best results.
And that's it, the butter is all rubbed in.
Little bits and small bits.
So we're going to set this aside and mix together our wet ingredients.
In a separate jug, we're going to add in our buttermilk.
Buttermilk is a very important ingredient in Irish Soda Bread but I also know it's not
available in a lot of countries.
So on www.BiggerBolderBaking.com, I put up a really easy recipe of how you can make it
yourself.
Into your buttermilk, we're going to add in an egg.
Not everybody adds in an egg into Irish Soda Bread but I find it makes the dough a lot
richer.
I got this egg from the farmer's market and you can tell because the yolk is really orange.
Do you see that?
Gorgeous!
So now we're going to add our wet ingredients into our dry ingredients.
With a spatula, what I like to do is to make a well in the middle of my dry ingredients
to make way for my buttermilk.
And then just pour in your liquid.
So now this is the fun part.
You're going to go in with a big open hand and we're just going to bring all of the dough
together.
It's really fast, a little bit messy, but that's ok.
Just go around the bowl.
Do it as fast as you can because the less that you mess with this dough, the less that
you handle it, the lighter your bread will be.
This bread is actually considered a quick bread because it is so quick to pull together
and it requires no yeast.
Now as you can see after a few seconds, our dough is already coming together.
We're not kneading, we're just kind of forming.
Now look we're getting to that stage where we've almost got a clean bowl.
You know I like that stage that means we're on the right track.
So I'm just going to take the dough off my fingers and at this stage turn it out onto
my counter top.
As you can see, we've got a lovely clean bowl which is what I'm always looking for when
I'm making dough.
All we're doing now is just forming the dough, we're not kneading it.
Irish Soda Bread does not need to be kneaded.
We're just bringing it together.
So if you just want to give it a little bit of a squish.
So just bring it together with your hands.
Any wrinkles on top that's totally fine.
Remember that it is a rustic homemade bread.
That's perfect!
All we're doing is just giving it a nice, round shape.
Now that we have our lovely shape, I'm just going to with a floured hand pat down the
bread to around an inch and a half thick.
And there you go.
That's it.
Now our bread is ready to be put on a baking tray.
Generously flour your baking tray and gently place on your Irish Soda Bread.
A very important part before our bread goes into the oven is to score the bread.
You know the traditional Irish Soda Bread has that cross.
Well that actually is a blessing of the bread.
So you're going to take a knife and actually bless your bread so you go in the name of
the father, the son.
And you push the knife right down.
You go over to the other side.
And it's the holy ghost, amen.
And if you can see that cross there, that is the blessing of the bread.
You always do that for traditional Irish Soda Bread.
After you bless the bread, there's one more important thing and it's to release the fairies.
You want to go into each corner of the bread and poke a hole with a knife and what this
does is release the fairies in your bread because they won't curse your bread and you'll
end up with a beautiful loaf of Irish Soda Bread.
You always want to glaze your bread before it goes into the oven.
Now I never like to crack a whole egg just to glaze one loaf, it drives me crazy.
So what my Mammy used to do and she taught me very well is to actually just use a little
bit of what's left over in your buttermilk-eggy jug.
So put that on your hands and then just glaze your loaf like this.
It saves you wasting an egg and you still get a lovely golden crust on your bread.
Thank you Mammy Stafford.
For a finishing touch, my mum used to always sprinkle oats on top of her Irish Soda Bread
so I'm going to do the same.
And there you have it, our beautiful Irish Soda Bread.
Just like my Mammie's.
It's such a fast bread to make that's why it's made in houses all over Ireland every
single day.
We are going to bake our bread at 425F/210C for 15 minutes to get a lovely crust then
we're going to turn the oven down and continue baking it until it's ready.
There's a very familiar smell in the air right now because although I'm very far away from
home, my kitchen smells just like my kitchen growing up in Ireland.
Look at at that beautiful loaf of bread.
You can see that Soda Bread actually rises up quite a lot when it bakes.
You end up with a big loaf.
Here you can see our lovely cross.
Some characteristics that you want to see in your Soda Bread is a nice crispy crust.
You hear that?
How you get that is keeping the oven door shut at all times while baking.
It keeps in the air.
It keeps in the steam.
It gives you that nice lovely crust.
Also, if you're ever wondering if your bread is baked enough, turn it over and give it
the tap test.
If it sounds hollow like this one does that means it's baked.
All in all this is a beautiful loaf of Soda Bread.
My mum used to make this for us almost every day and we'd have it with homemade soup.
The great thing about Soda Bread is the plain or dressed up, it's such a lovely bread to
have anytime.
I like to eat my brown bread simply with Irish Butter and jam, but no matter how you serve
it, you can't go wrong.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
If you want to see more of my Mum's Traditional Irish Recipes, then head over to my website
because she shared some fantastic ones over there.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you back here next Thursday for more Bigger
Bolder Baking.
Now I'm going to put a little jammy jam on there.
Mmm mmm mmmm.
Delicious!