Here's a recipe I've developed for Irish Soda Bread.
3-1/2 cups "packed" unbleached or white flour (measurement explained below)
2 tsp Cream of Tartar
2 tsp Baking Soda
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp or less salt
1 tsp Caraway Seed
1/2 cup Currants
2 cups Buttermilk (at room temperature)
Sift the first 5 ingredients together into a large bowl
Blend in the seed and currants
Pour in the buttermilk and stir, from the outside in and bottom up, making sure to evenly blend the dry ingredients with the buttermilk. The mixture will be crumbly, lumpy and slightly sticky, but neither too wet nor too dry.
Knead the dough slightly (no more than 10 times) with well floured hands. You may need some extra flour handy if the dough gets too sticky.
The above 2 steps should not take more than a minute.
Form into a ball that will be ~ 6-8" across and 2-3" thick.
I prefer to bake it in a cast iron frying pan that's lightly coated with cooking spray, but have also had good results on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Bake at ~ 350 deg F for ~ 45 minutes and this will vary depending on your oven. Ours works at 340 deg for 40 minutes.
Brush lightly with milk when removing from the oven if you wish. A nice sweet touch is to sprinkle 1/2 tsp of sugar before you put it in the oven.
There are people who will tell you that adding anything like caraway seed or currants to the bread is next to blasphemy and would look at it like many of us do with flavoured cigars, but, to quote a friend of mine "Whatever blows yer hair back". Dad adds bran to his, and my dearest wife wants me to toss in some flax seed some time instead of currants and caraway.
Flour measurement issue explained:
It's well documented that the main problem most people have baking anything is variances in the amount of flour. The best and most consistent way is to weigh it. 1 cup of cake flour is 114 grams, normal white flour will weigh 120 grams, bread flour is 130 and whole wheat is 140 for a cup. If 3 people use the same recipe with one using packed flour, one pouring the flour into a large measuring cup and the last weighing the flour, there will be 3 very different results. I've developed the above recipe using 600 grams of flour, which is technically 5 cups, but is 3-1/2 cups packed.
Now, I use plastic kitchen measuring utensils, dip the cup into the bag of flour and scoop it out to over-full, and then level off the cup with the back of a knife (straight back obviously).
Try it and see how it works out, and let me know. For what it's worth, this is friggin' awesome toasted while still warm out of the oven.
Jim!
3-1/2 cups "packed" unbleached or white flour (measurement explained below)
2 tsp Cream of Tartar
2 tsp Baking Soda
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp or less salt
1 tsp Caraway Seed
1/2 cup Currants
2 cups Buttermilk (at room temperature)
Sift the first 5 ingredients together into a large bowl
Blend in the seed and currants
Pour in the buttermilk and stir, from the outside in and bottom up, making sure to evenly blend the dry ingredients with the buttermilk. The mixture will be crumbly, lumpy and slightly sticky, but neither too wet nor too dry.
Knead the dough slightly (no more than 10 times) with well floured hands. You may need some extra flour handy if the dough gets too sticky.
The above 2 steps should not take more than a minute.
Form into a ball that will be ~ 6-8" across and 2-3" thick.
I prefer to bake it in a cast iron frying pan that's lightly coated with cooking spray, but have also had good results on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Bake at ~ 350 deg F for ~ 45 minutes and this will vary depending on your oven. Ours works at 340 deg for 40 minutes.
Brush lightly with milk when removing from the oven if you wish. A nice sweet touch is to sprinkle 1/2 tsp of sugar before you put it in the oven.
There are people who will tell you that adding anything like caraway seed or currants to the bread is next to blasphemy and would look at it like many of us do with flavoured cigars, but, to quote a friend of mine "Whatever blows yer hair back". Dad adds bran to his, and my dearest wife wants me to toss in some flax seed some time instead of currants and caraway.
Flour measurement issue explained:
It's well documented that the main problem most people have baking anything is variances in the amount of flour. The best and most consistent way is to weigh it. 1 cup of cake flour is 114 grams, normal white flour will weigh 120 grams, bread flour is 130 and whole wheat is 140 for a cup. If 3 people use the same recipe with one using packed flour, one pouring the flour into a large measuring cup and the last weighing the flour, there will be 3 very different results. I've developed the above recipe using 600 grams of flour, which is technically 5 cups, but is 3-1/2 cups packed.
Now, I use plastic kitchen measuring utensils, dip the cup into the bag of flour and scoop it out to over-full, and then level off the cup with the back of a knife (straight back obviously).
Try it and see how it works out, and let me know. For what it's worth, this is friggin' awesome toasted while still warm out of the oven.
Jim!
