- Hey, I'm John Kanell and today on Preppy Kitchen
we're making an easy, delicious Irish soda bread.
So let's get started.
To make this recipe you'll need all purpose flour,
cold butter, an egg, some sugar, baking soda, salt,
cold butter milk, raisins or currents are optional.
First off, set that oven to 425, we want it nice and hot.
You'll also wanna grab a cast iron skillet
or a baking sheet, both will work.
This gives you a nice crispy crust though.
Into a large bowl, I'm adding four cups
or 480 grams of all purpose flour.
I'm using a scale, it is the best way
to get delicious everything.
So I highly recommend one.
If you don't have a scale, here's the deal.
You're gonna wanna fluff the flour in the container,
sprinkle it into your cup, level it off,
and that's how you get an accurate cup full of flour.
If you scoop it up, oh my gosh,
you're adding a ton of extra flour.
One and a half teaspoons of baking soda.
This is such an interesting recipe
because the chemical reaction to make it
was actually discovered by Native Americans.
They used Pearl ash to leaven some flat cakes
they would make.
In Ireland, it became popular
because yeast wasn't very available.
It still makes a delicious, nutritious bread.
Right now I'm adding one teaspoon of kosher salt.
If you're using a fine grain salt, I would use half the salt
because these are pretty large salt granules, right?
Little salt pebbles.
I'm also adding four tablespoons of granulated sugar.
This will give it a little bit of sweetness
and also a little bit of softness as well.
Okay, whisk this up.
I'm setting this aside just for a moment
because I want to grab my one egg.
Plop that into a container.
I got the shell out, don't worry.
I'm also adding one and two thirds cups of cold buttermilk.
This is the acid that's gonna react with the baking soda.
So in you go.
Whisk that up.
Buttermilk is really important in that recipe.
It has is the acid that reacts with the baking soda
and makes everything nice and fluffy.
But if you don't have it, you can cheat it
using whole milk and vinegar.
For this amount of whole milk,
I would add like a tablespoon and a half of a white vinegar.
Just mix it in and set aside for a few minutes
and then add that with the egg.
Back to our bowl.
We need to add our butter in.
It's in the fridge, it needs to be nice and cold.
So let's get it out.
Nice and hard.
Four tablespoons of cold butter.
It's about 75 grams, and now I'm just gonna whittle away
at it and add that into my flour.
This butter's giving us some extra richness that's also
gonna play with the texture of our bread as well.
Now we're gonna use our clean hands
or a pastry cutter to work the cold butter in.
You want little pieces of butter
throughout your Irish soda bread,
not tiny, tiny little pieces all over,
but like larger chunks because when they go into the oven
at 425, you're gonna have steam pockets coming up.
It's gonna help it rise
as well as making it taste delicious.
For those of you who haven't had soda bread before,
it's amazing.
Slather it with butter and enjoy it with a cup of coffee
or tea, or just grab and go for an anytime snack.
There we go, that looks nice all throughout.
Create a well in the center.
It now for the fun part,
I'm gonna pour in this buttermilk mixture.
Once again, I don't wanna waste any of it,
and use a spatula to fold it in.
We do not wanna over mix this at all.
The key to having like a nice tender crumb
in the inside is to have little pieces of butter
and mixing until it is just combined.
Do not over mix.
Doing that will activate the gluten
and really cause the Irish soda bread to shrink back down
after it cools and be kind of dense.
This is called a quick bread, in case you didn't know.
Banana bread, zucchini bread, soda bread,
they're all similar.
We're using baking soda or sodium bicarbonate
to activate the leavening process.
It mixes with an acid that you've added in
and delicious, amazing things happen.
Quick breads were actually very popular in America,
even more so than yeasted breads a long time ago.
This is almost ready, right now you can add in
optional things like raisins or currants.
Sprinkle those in and it could be raisins, currents,
candied fruit, nuts, you could have orange zest.
Almost anything will work in this.
We're just gonna fold this together to finish the mixing
and distribute our raisins, in this case.
You can let me know how you like Irish soda bread at home.
I know a lot of you have family recipes
that are passed down and that much more special.
So I love hearing family's individual take on a recipe.
Lightly flour the surface of your counter.
Just a little bit.
We just need to form this into a loaf,
so it looks nice and pretty.
We're not gonna knead the dough.
This gets formed into a loaf, just bring it together,
and you can add a little bit of flour to the outside.
It is a very wet dough.
I have my loaf ready.
Now it goes into my cast iron pan.
You could also have this on a baking sheet
with parchment paper or even a cake pan will work too.
Plop that right in there.
Before it goes into the oven, we need a cross on top.
So just use a knife.
I like run it in flour first, because this is so wet.
And adding this X on is gonna help the dough kind of like
split in a controlled fashion, so it bakes more evenly.
Our bread's going into the oven, 25 to 30 minutes at 425
until it is puffed and golden.
You'll see what it looks like when it comes out of the oven.
Out of the oven, it's golden and smells amazing.
Let it cool just a bit, then it's time for a slice.
I hope I was able to describe soda bread and do it justice.
It is so delicious.
Crunchy on the outside, soft and amazing on the inside.
Kissed with just a little bit of sweetness.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.
And if you like this video,
check out my quick bread playlist.