If there is an easy bread to prepare, it is, without a doubt, the Irish soda bread. Few ingredients, easy to find, that only need to be mixed, slightly kneaded, and baked. In half an hour of cooking we have a delicious bread ready to eat. No waiting, raising, complicated kneading techniques or the like.

Irish soda bread is quick and easy to make . The miracle of the transformation of its basic dough into bread is achieved by the chemical reaction that results from combining lactic acid from buttermilk (milk with lemon) with sodium bicarbonate. This generates the carbon dioxide responsible for the growth of the crumb in this loaf of bread.

Our recipe is basic and can serve as a starting point for the many versions of soda bread that exist. Feel free to vary it to taste, flavoring the dough with herbs and spices, enriching it with seeds and nuts, changing the indicated flours for others or whatever you most want.

If you do not consume the whole loaf on the day of baking, the recommendation is to slice it and store it in the fridge in a plastic bag. It lasts a couple of days in good condition, although it will be richer by passing it through the toaster and accompanying it with a good homemade jam, honey, tomato and oil or similar.

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Ingredients (for 1 loaf of 900gr)

• 250g of white wheat flour
• 250g of whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 375ml whole milk
• 40ml of lemon juice

Elaboration

1. Mix the whole milk and the lemon juice, stir well and let stand between 10 and 15 minutes. The lemon cuts the milk and the mixture becomes buttermilk, a dairy product widely used in the production of bread and pastries in other countries (central Europe, UK, United States, among others).
2. Meanwhile we turn on the oven and preheat it to 200ºC, with conventional heat up and down. Place the oven rack in the center.
3. We use the vault of the ceramic bread oven as a container to prepare the bread dough. We introduce the dry ingredients, that is, the white flour, the integral, the sugar, the salt and the sodium bicarbonate. Remove until integrated.
4. Next we add the buttermilk that we have prepared, little by little, and mix with the help of the blade of a knife . Work the dough in this way until there is no more buttermilk left to add, then transfer it to a clean work surface and knead for a couple of minutes until a smooth dough is obtained.
5. If the dough sticks to the surface, sprinkle with a little flour and do the same with your hands, so it will be easier to manipulate. However, keep in mind that the dough should be slightly sticky.
6. We form a ball with the dough, sprinkle the tray of the Emile Henry ceramic oven with flour and place it on it. With the help of a sharp knife or a baker's knife, make two deep transverse cuts on the surface, forming a cross.
7. We clean the vault of the ceramic oven and place it on the base. Put in the oven and cook for 20 minutes. After this time we remove the vault and let cook another 10 minutes. With this, when the dough comes into direct contact with the heat of the oven, we get a crispy and golden crust. In case of looking for the opposite, we do not remove the upper piece and we cook the bread inside the ceramic oven during the 30 minutes that it requires.
8. Remove from the oven and let cool on the base of the ceramic oven before cutting and serving.

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