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
½ cup raw sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ cup melted butter
1½ 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.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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18 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.
A couple of questions:
Can I use round cake pans instead of pie pans? Does this affect rise?
Does it cook for the same amount of time if you omit the raisins?
I tried this recipe without the raisins. After 35 minutes my bread was dark tan all over. I used King Arthur unbleached AP flour. My dough did not appear quite as thick as yours. Very sticky but not as thick so I was not able to form them into balls. I kind of just piled the sticky dough into the pans.
It still tasted great but I could tell it was a tad overcooked. Any pointers?
Mel, cake pans shouldn’t make a difference in cooking time.
Don’t follow the cooking time too strictly. When it looks done, check if it’s done in the middle by poking a sharp knife into it.
I’ll admit, though, that we do tend to get some burnt edges every now and then. This year was our best batch. It was also the first time we used bread flour instead of AP flour.
Finally a recipe for Irish Soda Bread how I make it! My mom’s recipe’s ingredients are similar but says to knead etc – I make it in the mixer and plop it in the cast iron skillet – no sugar on top my recipe but I always add double what calls for in the recipe – makes a kind quick bread – lots of soft butter and homemade raspberry or strawberry jam!
Thanks! Your recipe came out great and your instructions were so easy to follow. Glad to have this fun version that yields two loaves. I couldn’t find my mom’s recipe so I decided to use yours. The sugar on the outside is what tempted me. I know, I know, they didn’t have sugar, eggs, raisins, etc. But who cares? I want it to taste good and be a treat.
Panicked at first because there was a whole bunch of flour in the bottom of the mixer bowl that I didn’t see when scraping the sides, but I just went ahead and baked it without that, not wanting to mix it in because I was worried it’d be tough ’cause maybe I’d done too much mixing as it was. Husband started out humoring me and wound up loving it.
40 minutes was perfect, it would’ve burnt any second. Round silicone baking pans made cleanup a breeze. I took it out of the pans right away because my mom always said it should be removed immediately.
Wish I could include a picture, they came out so pretty. Here is a photo of one of the loaves on our Flickr page:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7058/6991733853_165e66fc1e_b.jpg
Thank you again, so much. You really made our St. Patty’s Day.
Wow, that looks just like one of my wife’s loaves. So glad it worked out for you.
Now I have to go show this to her.
Hi Drew,
I’ve made the soda bread a couple more times and I figured I’d share more about the experience. Tonight I made the final loaves with the last of the buttermilk I had leftover.
Once I got clever and substituted Craisins (dried cranberries) for the raisins and it didn’t come out nearly as good. The raisins really impart something to the overall yummy taste of the bread.
Also, I’ve only used standard Sunmaid raisins, no white raisins. Does the mixing of the types of raisins make a difference? Maybe it would be good with part craisins part raisins.
I forgot to mention that in all cases I just used plain ordinary granulated sugar in the recipe proper (I didn’t have a large amount of raw sugar around) and just used a couple of little brown packets of Sugar in the Raw” (which I keep on hand for guests who like real sugar in their coffee or tea) on top of the loaves for the sugar coating.
What, do you suppose, would happen if you substituted whole wheat flour? I’ve been using King Arthur All Purpose flour. I see you mentioned bread flour but I haven’t used that.
Anyhow, thanks again for the great recipe.
Denise, this is already a pretty dense bread. The bread flour makes it a little lighter, but as you’ve discovered it works with plain white flour. If you go with whole wheat, that will make it even denser. I like combining whole wheat with bread flour. If you don’t want to get the bread flour, get some vital wheat gluten and add some to the dough. (Check the directions on the package to see how much to add.)
Easter sunday and struggling to find buttermilk in the few shops that are open today..can I substitute one cup milk + 1tpsn vinegar for 1cup buttermilk?
I hope this is in time for you. Yes, you can do that. Actually, you could use just plain milk and it would be fine. Buttermilk is better, but unless you compare side-by-side you’d never notice.
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