Irish soda bread

If there’s one bread that’s super easy to make, it’s Irish soda bread, without a doubt. Just a few ingredients, easy to find, that only need to be mixed, lightly kneaded, and into the oven. In half an hour of baking, we have delicious bread ready to dig in. No waiting, proofing, complicated kneading techniques, or anything like that.

Irish soda bread is quick and easy to make. The miracle of such a basic dough turning into bread is brought about by the chemical reaction that results from combining lactic acid from the buttermilk (milk with lemon) with baking soda. This generates the carbon dioxide responsible for the crumb's rise in this bargain bread.

Our recipe is basic and it can serve as a starting point for multiple versions that exist for soda bread. Feel free to vary it to your liking, flavoring the dough with herbs and spices, enriching it with seeds and nuts, swapping the flours indicated for others, or whatever you like best.

If you don’t eat the whole loaf on the day it’s baked, it’s best to slice it and store it in the fridge in a plastic bag. It keeps well for a couple of days, though it’ll be tastier if you run it through the toaster and serve it with a good homemade jam, honey, tomato and oil, or similar.

Emile Henry Round Ceramic Oven, Laura Ashley porcelain mug and Laura Ashley cup saucer.

Ingredients (for 1 loaf of 900gr)

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

*As you will see in step 1 of the preparation, we use these ingredients to make Buttermilk or whey. You can substitute both by using 400ml of buttermilk directly if it's easier for you.

Preparation

1. We mix the whole milk and the lemon juice, stir well, and let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes. The lemon curdles the milk and the mixture turns into buttermilk, a dairy product widely used in the making of breads and pastries in other countries (Central Europe, the UK, the United States, among others).
2. Meanwhile, turn on the oven and preheat it to 200ºC with conventional top and bottom heat. Place the oven rack in the center.
3. We use the vault of the ceramic bread oven as a container for preparing the bread dough. We add the dry ingredients, that is, the white flour, the whole wheat flour, the sugar, the salt, and the baking soda. Stir until combined.
4. Next, we add the buttermilk we’ve prepared, little by little, and mix using the paddle of a knife. We work the dough this way until there is no more buttermilk left to add, then we transfer it to a clean work surface and knead for a couple of minutes until we obtain a homogeneous dough.
5. If the dough sticks to the surface, sprinkle a little flour and do the same with your hands; this will make it easier to handle. However, keep in mind that the dough should remain slightly sticky.
6. Shape the dough into a ball, sprinkle the Emile Henry ceramic baking dish with flour and place it on top. Using a very sharp knife or a baker's blade we make two deep crosswise cuts on the surface, forming a cross.
7. We clean the dome of the ceramic oven and place it on the base. Put it in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. After this time, remove the dome and bake for another 10 minutes. This way, with the dough in direct contact with the oven’s heat, we get a crisp, golden crust. If you want the opposite, do not remove the top piece and bake the bread inside the ceramic oven for the full 30 minutes required.
8. Remove from the oven and let cool on the ceramic oven base before cutting and serving.

Emile Henry Round Ceramic Oven, creamer of Laura Ashley porcelain, Pallarès carbon steel knife and Laura Ashley denim cotton tablecloth