This isn’t the classic, plain bread you would eat with dinner. It’s more of a dessert bread, sweet, with raisins. Feel free to leave out the raisins and the sugar on top if you want to make it as a dinner bread.
Ingredients
4 cups white flour
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup melted butter
1-1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 cup brown raisins
1 cup white raisins
2 tbsp raw sugar (yes, sugar is listed twice)
Directions
Mix all the dry ingredients together.
Get your daughter to beat the egg and stir in the buttermilk.
Add the wet ingredients to the mixing bowl.
Stir briefly before adding the butter.
You don’t want to add the hot butter directly to the egg, or the egg will cook. Now add the butter.
Mix well. Scrape the sides occasionally to get everything incorporated.
Make sure you get all the way down to the bottom. Dough hooks tend to leave a bit of dry ingredients on the bottom.
Once the wet and dry ingredients are well mixed, add the raisins.
Mix on slow.
This dough is very thick, and tends to wrap around the mixer. I’ve done this by hand before. I don’t recommend it unless you’re trying to get in a workout at the same time.
Scoop the dough out evenly into two floured pie tins. This dough will not pour.
Shape each portion into a round loaf.
You should have two even loaves.
Sprinkle a tablespoon of raw sugar on the top of each loaf. Don’t measure, lay it on heavy.
You should have a generous coating over the whole loaf.
Bake at 375° for 40 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.
Insert a knife into the thickest part. If there is dough on it when you pull it out, put the loaves back in for another five minutes. Don’t use a toothpick. The crust is very stiff, and can clean any wet dough off as you pull it out. The first picture below shows a little dough right near the tip, the next came out clean (except for some sugar from the top) five minutes later.
The finished loaves will be dark tan with a deeply-cracked surface.
The raw sugar sprinkled on top leaves a sweet crystalline crust.
Serve with plenty of butter. Keep leftovers to make French toast the next morning. Seriously, you want to do the French toast. It’ll be the best you’ve ever had.
This last image links to a closeup of the deep crevices in the crust.
And that’s it.
9 Comments
Your recipe for Irish Soda Bread sounds delicious, and your daughter is such a cutie!
If you have a chance read my post on Irish Soda bread –it’s in my March archives — the Irish traditionalists say there should be no sugar in it!
What do they know?
Pat
Forget the traditionalists! (I censored myself there, in case you couldn’t tell.) They say there shouldn’t be any egg in it, either.
My wife’s aunt — and this is my wife’s recipe, by the way — gave her all kinds of grief about how it wasn’t “traditional”. Then her great aunt … the one who was actually born in Ireland … said, “Well, I always put egg in it. It tastes better.”
Case closed.
I knew you’d get a kick out of Mr. O’Dwyer’s web site!
My sister-in-law was born and raised in County Cork and she said her Mom made plain soda bread, burt she prefers the sugar/egg/raisen version now too.
I visited Ireland a few years ago and they actually are much more cosmopolitan about what they will eat, as many travel to Italy and Spain for vacation and love the food. They now drink wine with their meals too!
Things change — traditionalists be darned.
Pat
Sorry for resurrecting an old post.
I made soda bread last night and while it is similar to a doorstop, it is delicious. I didn’t use this recipe, because I wanted to try the “traditional” one
kidding.
What I love about it the one I used is that it tasted sweet like wheat.
That said, you notice that I dropped by here as soon as I tried something to see “how would Drew do this?”
I’ll be doing this one again soon. And making an extra for French toast.
Your daughter is adorable,(but you know that!) and your Irish Soda Bread looks so good I’m going to try it tomorrow!
BTW, from what I can see in the pictures, your kitchen looks a lot like one I had when we lived in Parma. When I made cookies, pies and homemade noodles I too had to use the top of the range. I had hubby cute a piece of plywood that I could lay on top – which gave me an extra foot. I had a piece of oil cloth to lay on top. It slid right on the side of the range to store. Before that I was laying a bath towel down so that clean up was easier. (And it would keep the top from getting scratched up) LOL When I was using the top of the range to cook, I could use it on top of the sink for space.
He also made me a drop down table that I could use as extra counter top for baking times like those. It was just a stained piece of plywood with hinges so it stayed against the wall unless I needed it for cooking or serving. (Big family) From where your chairs seem to be it would be on the wall behind them – just like mine was in Parma
Carole, when I was looking for my first house I walked through a lot of tiny kitchens in Parma. I’ve been meaning to make the same kind of stove-top cutting board you described. Just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I made a super-traditional soda bread this year for SPD — no egg, no sugar, the works. And it was….
not great. At all. I am sooooo making this one next time!
My wife’s aunt gave her so much grief for using the egg it was amazing. So they checked with the aunt’s mother-in-law — the one born in Ireland … who made the best soda bread in the family — and asked her if she used egg. “Only if you want it to taste good.” Okay then.
One Trackback
[...] don’t know what it is about Irish food, but the leftovers make the best breakfast. With the soda bread it’s French toast, with the corned beef dinner it’s corned beef hash. This is so much [...]