Irish soda bread is one of the easiest breads you can make because instead of using yeast
you use baking soda hence the name
but soda bread is older than baking soda
like this loaf using an Irish recipe from 1836.
So thank you to Babel for sponsoring this video as we learn the history of Irish soda bread
before and after baking soda
this time on Tasting History.
So in the early 19th century the bakers of Ireland had several ways to leaven their bread.
There were the old standbys of sourdough or ale barm which is a byproduct of brewing ale
as well as less popular yet still effective ingredients like sowens which is made from fermented oats,
and even potato juice that was left out to turn sour,
but all of these while different were still yeast-based leaveners but soda bread did not require yeast,
which takes quite some time to rise but rather relied on carbon dioxide that was a byproduct of mixing certain bases and acids.
Now for the last 175 years or so that meant sodium bicarbonate or baking soda,
and that's usually mixed with buttermilk or some other acidic liquid but before sodium bicarbonate
they had sodium carbonate which while similar is different and frankly not quite as effective but
that is what is called for in this recipe from 'The Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet' in September of 1836.
And I just love the eloquence of of the author.
"Dear Sir - aware of your Readiness and desire to give publicity to any thing calculated
to ameliorate the condition of our dense population, I am induced to send you an approved recipe for making "soda bread" -
a substance which I hope to see ere long and in general use in this and every other part of the North -
for certainly there is no bread to be had equal to it for invigorating the body promoting digestion strengthening the stomach,
and improving the state of the bowels."
Quite a resume for a simple loaf of bread. He then goes on to say that
"If any wish to make the experiment, let them put a pound and a half of good wheatened meal into a large bowl,
mix with it two teaspoons of finely powdered salt, and then take a large spoonful of super carbonate of soda,
dissolve it in half a tee cup of cold water, and add it to meal;
rub up all intimately together, then pour into the bowl as much very sour buttermilk as will make the whole into soft dough..."
And I just need to comment on the fact that I never thought I'd come across a recipe that uses the phrase
"Rub up all intimately together" but here we are.
He then goes on to say that the loaf should be baked in a dutch oven a cast iron dutch oven,
and it would have heat coming from the bottom as well as coals put on top so that heat is coming from all around
but since I endeavor to make things in my kitchen here at home there are going to be no hot coals going on top of my dutch oven
but I did recently get to see that method of cooking done in Morocco.
They were making something called tabadirt or medfuna and that is basically how it was made,
and I recently did a video on that so if you haven't seen it definitely go check it out it's really cool to see that kind of traditional way of baking bread.
Also it was cool because when I was in Morocco I got to practice my French that I had been brushing up on
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Now for this Irish soda bread what you'll need is: one and a half pounds or 680 grams of flour,
and the flour they would have been using was called soft flour which is a whole wheat flour but with a very coarse and uneven grind,
and you can find it today usually it's called Irish style flour. I think King Arthur flour has one and I got mine from Odlums which is an Irish company.
I'll put the link in the description but it's kind of ridiculously expensive for a bit of flour
so if you just want to use whole wheat flour that works fine.
2 teaspoons of salt, 3 ounces or 88 milliliters of cold water, 2 cups or 475 milliliters of buttermilk,
and two teaspoons super carbonate of soda.
But what is super carbonate of soda?
Well according to 'The Gentleman's Magazine' of 1817
that is what the Scots and the Irish called sodium carbonate.
And there is food grade sodium carbonate that is still used today for several different things mainly ramen noodles
but I couldn't find any so you can also buy sodium carbonate that is just like a cleaner,
and I'm guessing it's food grade but I don't know so instead I made my own sodium carbonate
using what she blinded me with...
"science!"
See baking soda, not baking powder, but baking soda which is very easy to get is sodium bicarbonate
and to turn that into sodium carbonate all you have to do is spread some onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper,
and then place it in the oven at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour.
This causes a decomposition reaction which lets carbon dioxide and water vapor go off into the air
and leaves you just with sodium carbonate. It's all very Bill Nye the Science Guy.
"Science rules."
Now do you have to do this? No. Frankly sodium bicarbonate which has been used for over 150 years
is going to be a lot more effective. That's one reason why they changed.
Also it is less caustic. The sodium carbonate, it's not as caustic as lye but I still wouldn't mess with it too much with your hands,
and perhaps that's why the recipe says to dilute it into three ounces of water.
Then you want to aerate your flour by lifting it up and letting it gently fall back down into the bow;.
Do this for about a minute and then stir in the salt and pour in the dissolved sodium carbonate.
And this is where you proceed to rub up all intimately together.
OH YEAH.
Once intimately rubbed pour in the buttermilk and start working it into the dough.
Now you may need a little bit more you may need a little bit less the recipe says that you're looking for a dough
"as soft as could possibly be handled and the softer the better."
In an article from the 1849 Waterford times says that it should be
"wetter than pie crust, too stiff to pour, but not stiff enough to roll."
So that's what you're looking for. Also the moment that buttermilk hits the sodium carbonate the clock is ticking.
They will start to react so the sooner you can get it into the oven the better.
You're going to place the dough in the bottom of a cast iron pan or pot.
Then make a couple slices in the top and put the lid on and pop it in the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit 220 Celsius for a half hour.
Then you're going to remove the lid and let it bake for another 20 to 25 minutes.
And while it bakes I wanted to give you all an update that for anyone in the US who has pre-ordered the Tasting History cookbook,
that one right back there, you can now sign up to get a signed book plate with your order.
And I'll put that link in the description as well as in the pinned comment.
So if you want my autograph, if you want a signed copy of the book just make sure you fill that out before April 17th.
The book comes out on April 18th.
Also if you are international or want to buy from an independent bookstore and get a signed copy
I'll put links to some of those bookstores in the description as well.
And now with book stuff out of the way and the bread a-baking I'm going to tell you a little bit about the history of Irish soda bread.
For most of history bread has either been yeast leaven like most of the bread that we think of, or
unleavened like matzah or Indian roti,
but for the past few centuries there has been a third option and that is chemically leavened breads or quick breads.
Perhaps the first chemical leavener used in baking was ammonium bicarbonate also known as hartshorn salt.
In the 17th century northern European bakers began grinding deer antlers and dry distilling them into a powder
which could be used as a leavener when heated,
but it was a finicky ingredient because as it heated it would give off ammonia gas which stinks
so you're working with that and if any of that gas gets caught up in the bread
that's gonna make for some real nasty bread.
Now another option more common in North America was pearl ash or potash which was potassium carbonate,
and while it had been made and used for all sorts of reasons throughout the 18th century on July 31st 1790
a new process for producing it developed by Samuel Hopkins received the very first U.S patent signed by George Washington.
Patent number one.
And this pearl ash is used in several recipes from America's very first cookbook aptly titled
'American Cookery' by Amelia Simmons in 1796.
She uses it in a recipe for cookies for specifically Christmas cookies
and for two recipes for gingerbread, and even today it's often used in Germany for their gingerbread lebkuchen.
Now around the same time that George Washington was signing that patent for pearl ash production
in France a chemist named Nicolas LeBlanc was developing a method to convert table salt sodium chloride into soda,
specifically sodium carbonate which which is the one that is called for in today's recipe,
and the potential uses for it were numerous and quite lucrative because rather than just baking bread
he was going to see it be used for making glass and producing soap,
but his patron was the Duke of Orleans who had his head chopped off by the French Revolution,
and the French Revolutionary government seized LeBlanc's work and all of his rights to it.
He fought for 15 years to get the rights back unsuccessfully,
and he ended up taking his own life. It was very, very sad.
But his process lived on and in 1806 it started to be used in large manufacturers in both England and in France.
And in 1817 'The Gentleman's Magazine of London' ran a story about a man who
endeavored to use this sodium carbonate instead of yeast to leaven bread,
"and in this attempt he flatters himself he has completely succeeded, at least to his own satisfaction.
This object he is accomplished by you using the flour of wheat, mealy potatoes, the common culinary salt, and water...
carbonate of soda and muriatic acid."
Here too is where it tells us that "in Scotland and Ireland [carbonate of soda] is termed supercarbonate of soda."
Now it's unclear whether or not it was this sodium carbonate that was used in the recipe for soda cakes from the cookbook 'The Virginia Housewife'
but it's definitely what became the popular leavener at the time and replaced pearl ash or pot ash,
but it didn't have long at the top because by the late 1830s they were developing sodium bicarbonate or baking soda.
Now it had been made in laboratories as early as 1801 when a German pharmacist Valentin Rose discovered it,
but it didn't become popular in baking until 1846 when Dr. Austin Church teamed up with the manufacturer John Dwight
to build a factory in upstate New York to mass produce the chemical under the name baking soda.
And they chose to market it under the same trademark as Vulcan Spice Mills which was a company owned by Church's son.
The logo sporting the Arm and Hammer of the Roman god Vulcan.
Now while Arm and Hammer baking soda was becoming the popular thing to use
the people of Ireland were in more need of soda leavened bread than ever
because from 1845 to 1852 the potato blight destroyed the majority of people's number one food source potatoes.
And even in the midst of the Great Famine the double and quarterly Journal of Medicine remarked
"Due to the failure of the potato crop, a large quantity of bicarbonate of soda was employed by the poorer classes in the preparation of bread."
And I did an entire video on the Irish Potato Famine so if you haven't seen that make sure to watch that one.
Now the Irish have always had leavened bread as part of their diet but it wasn't a huge part because
of the grain that they were using. The flour tended to be very coarse and
the yeast just couldn't really grab a hold of it and and you know it was low in gluten so it just didn't rise very much,
but baking soda did work with this flour and so even after the the Potato Famine ended
soda bread stuck around, and there were three types: white, brown, and fly.
"The fly variety containing currents in rather exiguous quantities."
The fly varieties sometimes called soda cake, currant cake, or spotted dog was kept around for for special occasions in Ireland but
in America the Irish immigrants, that's kind of what their version of soda bread ended up becoming.
The American soda bread also used American wheat which allowed for more of a cake-like texture,
and they started doing as Americans do and adding a lot more sugar into it as well.
So today if you went to Ireland and ordered soda bread you'd likely get something rather different
than if you ordered soda bread here in the United States but in both cases
they would usually be accompanied with a nice big Pat of salted butter which seemed to be the case in 1836 as well.
See once you take the bread out of the oven and remove it from the pot then
"This, when somewhat cooled and moderately buttered,
is as wholesome food as ever entered man's stomach, and I hope that many may be induced to put my assertion to the test of experience."
And here we are Irish soda bread from 1836.
So one thing that I noticed right away is it is so much darker than than it was when it went in
and that's actually because of the the sodium carbonate.
Sodium carbonate helps along the Maillard Process
which is what makes meat brown and other things brown. It kind of gives that flavor,
and so it browns pretty much everything that it goes into, so that's interesting.
It's also why it's still used today often instead of lye to make pretzels because it gives it that nice brown color.
Now the flower really held together but it looks rougher.
Like just even the top of the bread just looks
rough. So I'm curious howit's going to taste.
Let's go.
Butter helps.
I mean it's good.
I don't necessarily know that the flour changes the flavor all that much.
It's not super flavorful but soda breads rarely are.
Bread often gets most of its flavor from the yeast so you know, not a lot of flavor. There's some,
but I actually really like the texture and I didn't think that I would.
You get these pieces of really whole grains in it and and so it makes it a little bit more exciting
because it's not all that exciting of a bread in general but yeah it's perfect for St Patrick's Day.
So again if you want a signed copy of the Tasting History cookbook and have pre-ordered it
make sure to fill out the form in the description,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.