Enjoy a simple, sweet, and easy bread tonight. It’s 10 minutes to bring together and 50 minutes to cook. The hardest part is having buttermilk in the house!
I love it when you make bread …
Said my carb/bread loving husband who in all honesty, thinks any homemade bread I make is “r
Oh, and my nephew, who dreamily told me:
Aunt Joe, a meal without carbs is like the night without the moon …
Irish Soda Bread is worth the carbs.
But seriously: I knocked back about a fourth of a loaf after a serious leg workout. It’s pretty tasty.
Irish Soda Bread
Ingredients
- 4 – 41/2 c AP flour
- 1/4 c sugar
- 1 tsp Kosher salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 T baking powder
- 6 T softened butter
- 1 large egg beaten
- 1 3/4 c buttermilk
- 1/4 c melted butter for brushing on the loaf while it bakes
- 1/4 c buttermilk mixed with the melted butter for brushing on the loaf while it bakes
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a cast iron skillet with butter or lay parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
- Whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a large mixing bowl.
- Work the softened butter into the flour with your fingers until the butter is dispersed through the flour.
- Make a well in the middle of the mixture and add the beaten egg and the buttermilk. Mix well with a spoon until the dough is stiff and hard to stir.
- Throw some flour on your counter, turn the sticky, shaggy dough from the bowl onto the counter and knead just until it comes together into a ball.
- Don’t over-knead because the final product will be dense. Shaggy is good.
- Form the dough into a ball and place on your desired cooking apparatus. Score the top with an “X”. Don’t go too deep or the bread will splay open while it cooks. The “X” helps the heat get into the bread while it cooks and tradition says it might be a nod to the Christain cross.
- Brush the dough with the buttermilk and butter mixture.
- Bake at 375 for 45-50 minutes and brush with the buttermilk/butter mixture at 10 – 15-minute intervals until you have used all the buttermilk and butter.
- Cool, 10 – 20 minutes. Best served warm. Store leftovers in a ziplock baggie.
Notes
If you don’t have a cast iron skillet, just use a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Get yourself a decent pastry brush
