Irish Soda Bread Reimagined

Yesterday Sweetie and I were invited to lunch at the home of friends who had been evacuated during the recent wildfires, but, fortunately, their house was spared and we were celebrating that. About two hours before we were to leave, Sweetie remembered that we had been asked to bring some bread...bread that I had made. With not nearly enough time for making yeast bread, I was trying to think of something that would work when Sweetie suggested Irish Soda Bread. It's a favorite of his and goes together fairly quickly.

I haven't made it for a while and this time I wanted to make it a bit savory to go with the lunch main dish of a luscious old fashioned chicken stew. Herbs seemed just the thing and I had some fresh Italian parsley on the windowsill, and some fresh thyme and rosemary on the porch in a planter. Still, it seemed a bit too ordinary. Then I decided to add a bit of crunch and lots of flavor with finely chopped pecans. A bit of graham flour added more flavor and the lemon juice I added to the soy creamer to sour it was the final touch. This was decidedly not my Aunt May's Irish Soda Bread, even if it started out with her recipe!

A key thing to remember if you make this is that this kind of bread works best with the least amount of handling. Stir just enough to blend dry into wet, then shape gently with your hands into a ball, tucking any dry bits underneath...they will get wet enough that way. Don't forget the traditional cross cut with a knife. It helps the center cook evenly with the rest of the loaf.

A big thank you to Deb and Jim for a great lunch. Best chicken stew ever, plus an interesting salad dressing that I'm going to post later, and delicious pecan pie cookie bars for dessert. Best of all, the friendship and great conversation.

Irish Soda Bread with Herbs and Pecans
based on Aunt May's Irish Soda Bread
makes one large loaf

2 cups (about) whole milk or soy creamer
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat or graham flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons sugar

8 oz. (1 stick) cold butter, in thin slices

½ cup pecans, chopped finely

¼ cup roughly chopped mixed fresh herbs - I used Italian parsley, thyme and rosemary

In a bowl combine the milk and the fresh lemon juice. Let sit to 'sour' the milk, at least 5 minutes.

Put the dry ingredients in a bowl with the pecans and herbs; mix well. Dot all over with the butter and cut in well with a fork or pastry blender.

 Add the soured milk and mix just until moist - don’t over handle. You may need to add 2 - 4 more tablespoons of milk or a few tablespoons of flour.  Some dry stuff is OK but the dough should be sticky.

Pat into a round on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Cut a cross on top. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees F. Cool a bit before slicing.

Irish Soda Bread in the Denver Area

Just came home from a visit to my brother who lives near Denver. You might know him from this blog as NoHandle. One of his requests for the visit was for me to bake Irish Soda Bread, which I was happy to do since it is a favorite of mine, too.

Denver airport

First I looked up what changes are necessary for baking at high altitudes, and made adjustments to the sugar, baking soda and liquid, plus preheated the oven to be hotter. Then I cut the cold non-dairy margarine (instead of butter) into the dry ingredients, measured out a combination of almond milk and soy creamer and added lemon juice (instead of the buttermilk - but it's better with buttermilk if you can tolerate dairy). Golden raisins were added to the dry mixture and tossed around to coat, then I made a well in the dry ingredients and added the wet mixture. Somehow the recipe I was using called for twice the liquid needed, so the mixture looked like pancake batter...not the look we were going for.

I added more flour...and more flour...and more flour until it looked right, then shaped it on a parchment lined baking sheet and cut the cross shape all the way through and baked it. Well, it took a LOT longer than it should have and the texture was much denser than normal. It did taste terrific, so not a waste of time or ingredients, but not the bread I was hoping for either. Went back and checked the recipe and found the mistype. Changed the amount of liquid in that post...which is many years old, so not too many have baked that recipe I'll bet. Below is the correct recipe, and some photos of the bread we ate. If you try this recipe as now written, your bread will likely be a bit lighter in texture and perhaps a bit more crumbly. You can, of course, use currants or regular raisins in place of the golden ones. Even plain with no added fruit is delicious.

Tea or coffee go really well with this. It's national coffee day or something, so treat yourself...bake some Irish Soda Bread and have it with some coffee and remember that life is good, even when there are parts of it that are heartbreaking.

Mini Golden Raisin Soda Bread Loaf
Makes one mini loaf

1 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour or regular whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1/4 cup tablespoons sugar
4 oz. (½ stick) cold butter, in thin slices
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup dried golden raisins, plumped with hot water, then drained

Mix the dry ingredients, in a bowl. Add the butter slices  and cut in well with a fork or pastry blender. Add the golden raisins. Add the buttermilk and mix just until mostly moist - don’t over-handle. Some dry stuff is OK but the dough should be sticky. Pat into a round on a parchment-lined or silpat lined cookie sheet. Cut a cross on top all the way through. Bake 30-35 minutes at 350 degree F. Tap bottom to make sure bread is cooked through. It will sound hollow. Cool a bit before slicing.

Twofer- Spring Salad and Date-Pecan Soda Bread

Although fall is my favorite time of year, spring comes a close second. The days are lengthening so there is more time to enjoy the sunshine, birdsong and fresh spring flowers. Yesterday I planted some strawberry plants and will soon be getting the seedlings crowding my sunroom into the ground outdoors. They just need a few days of hardening off first.

Inside the house there are changes, too. Sweetie and I decided to upgrade our tiny guest room with a queen size bed but, since that size bed takes up most of the room, we opted for a chest Murphy bed. Until we visited a home show a few weeks ago we didn't even know that such a thing existed. The memory foam mattress fold into three attached sections and fits into the chest. The chest also contains a drawer for storage and a couple of support pieces which fold or roll out. Closed up it's a pretty piece of furniture.

Yesterday I was in Santa Rosa and decided to stop by the new Safeway on College Avenue where G&G market was for over 25 years. They have done a nice job making it into a Safeway and near the front there is an amazing array of salad greens and fixings. I had a good time choosing some items to make a salad for dinner, and then went right next to the salad area and bought some already grilled chicken kabobs to top the salad with.

In my world a dinner salad is best accompanied by warm bread. I decided to make Aunt May's Irish Soda Bread, but changed up to include dates and pecans. After we had some I wondered why I don't bake this weekly. Then I remembered that I'm trying not to bake things that we feel compelled to eat immediately because Sweetie and I both are losing a few pounds that crept up on us during the winter. Weekly soda bread would put on the pounds, but it's nice for the rare treat.

Spring Salad with Chicken, Avocado, Broccoli and Snap Peas

2 cups mixed spring mix type greens...small red and green lettuces, mizuna, mustard, curly endive, spinach, etc.
2 cups mixed green salad...torn or chopped romaine, iceberg, red cabbage, etc.
1 cup shredded or matchstick carrots
2-3 tablespoons sliced almonds
1/4 cup cooked and cooled wheat berries
2-4 tablespoons cooked and cooled red quinoa
2-3 tablespoons raisins
1 cup sugar snap peas, rinsed and sliced into bite sized pieces
1/2-1 cup broccoli florets, steamed and cooled
1/2 - 1 avocado,peeled, pitted and sliced
1/2 cup cooked chicken, in bite sized pieces, warmed (I used to grilled kabobs, stick removed)
your favorite Asian dressing (I used Newman's Own Sesame Ginger)

In a large salad bowl mix the spring mix greens, green salad greens, carrots, almonds, wheat berries, quinoa, raisins and snap peas. Toss gently to mix. Add the broccoli and toss gently again. Add the amount of dressing you like and toss to coat lettuce leaves. Pile salad on large plates. Top with sliced avocado, arrange in a nice pattern, and chicken pieces. Serve at once.

Aunt May's Soda Bread but with Dates and Pecans

makes one medium loaf

1 cup (about) soy milk
3 tablespoons plain yogurt (not Greek style)
1 egg yolk

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup Irish style whole-meal flour or whole wheat flour1/4 cup wheat bran
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
4 oz. (½ stick) cold butter or margarine, in thin slices
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup roughly chopped dried pitted dates
 
In a small bowl combine the milk and the yogurt. Let sit to 'sour' the milk, at least 5 minutes. Stir in the egg yolk. Set aside.

Sift the dry ingredients over the butter and cut in well with a fork or pastry blender. Add the brown sugar, pecans and date pieces; mix well.
Add the soured milk and mix just until moist - don’t over handle. You may need to add 2 - 4 more tablespoons of milk or a tablespoon more of flour. Some dry stuff is OK but the dough should be sticky.

Pat into a round on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle lightly with flour. Cut a cross on top. Bake 45 minutes at 3500 F. Cool a bit before slicing.

Mini Cranberry Walnut Soda Bread Loaf

There they sat on the counter, reminding me that I had left them out of the scones; a half recipe of bourbon soaked cranberries and a similar amount of chopped walnuts. What to do with them? I'm out of pumpkin at the moment, although I do have some sugar pumpkins ready to be cooked with, just no pumpkin puree, so no pumpkin recipe this time.

A check of the fridge showed that I have buttermilk and butter, so an obvious and delicious choice was Irish soda bread enhanced with cranberries and walnuts instead of currants and caraway. The lovely thing about soda bread is how quickly it goes together. I grated a little clementine zest into the sugar and rubbed it in a la Dorie Greenspan, then added that to the mixture of all-purpose and white whole wheat flour, plus baking soda, baking powder and salt. The butter was sliced and worked into the dry mixture, the buttermilk added and mixed in about half way, then I dumped in the cranberries and walnuts and mixed the rest of the way, with just a bit of the dry mixture staying dry...don't want to overwork the gluten on this quick bread. Onto the silpat lined baking sheet with the dough, a quick shape with floured hands, then I cut a cross into the center with a bench scraper. A sprinkle of sanding sugar and into the oven it went.

This is a delightful version of my Aunt May's soda bread. I only made half the recipe because that was the right proportion for the cranberries, but just double it to make a big loaf. The cranberries, walnuts and clementines are all fall flavors and great with the tang the buttermilk gives. This makes a lovely afternoon snack with a cup of tea. Sweetie enjoyed a slice with some fresh persimmons and he said that the bread went perfectly with that autumn fruit. I just love autumn afternoons!

Mini Cranberry Walnut Soda Bread Loaf
Makes on mini loaf

1 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1/4 cup tablespoons sugar
zest from half an orange or a whole clementine or tangerine
4 oz. (½ stick) cold butter, in thin slices
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup dried cranberries, plumped with hot water or bourbon, then drained
1/3 cup chopped walnuts

Mix the dry ingredients, except sugar, in a bowl. Put the sugar into a small bowl and rub the citrus zest into it with your clean fingers. Mix sugar into the dry ingredients. Add the butter slices  and cut in well with a fork or pastry blender. Add the buttermilk and mix just until partly moist - don’t over-
handle. Add the cranberries and walnuts; mix well. Some dry stuff is OK but the dough should be sticky. Pat into a round on a parchment-lined or silpat lined cookie sheet. Cut a cross on top. Bake 30-35 minutes at 350 degree F. Tap bottom to make sure bread is cooked through. It will sound hollow. Cool a bit before slicing.

Michigan Cherries in Soda Bread

On a recent visit, Big Sis brought a bag of wonderful, tangy, chewy, dark red dried cherries from Michigan. One of our sisters lives near Traverse City and they are famous for their cherries. It was an excellent hostess gift!

With such a bounty in hand, I had fun thinking about how to use those cherries. What I finally decided on was to use them in one of my favorite quick breads...Irish Soda Bread. Now my ancestors did use dried fruit in baking, but I think it was often raisins, currants, and prunes. Beautiful dried cherries like these would be pure luxury...and they were in this bread. I also added some golden raisins (more traditional) and the two went very well together.

Soda bread goes together quickly, especially because it does best with minimal handling. The craggy top is nice and crunchy while the interior is buttery and soft with bits of the fruit here and there. I was out of buttermilk, so I put some freshly squeezed lime juice in some milk to 'sour' it. Worked beautifully. In very little time I had some nice warm soda bread to go with a cup of Irish Breakfast tea. Now I'm going to think about what else I want to make with the rest of the cherries. Hmmm.

Irish Soda Bread with Golden Raisins and Dried Cherries
makes one medium loaf

1 cup (about) whole milk
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

2 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
4 oz. (½ stick) cold butter, in thin slices
¼ cup golden raisins or currants
¼ cup roughly chopped dried cherries
 
In a small bowl combine the milk and the fresh lime juice. Let sit to 'sour' the milk, at least 5 minutes.
Sift the dry ingredients over the butter and cut in well with a fork or pastry blender. Add the raisins and dried cherry pieces; mix well.

Add the soured milk and mix just until moist - don’t over handle. You may need to add 2 - 4 more tablespoons of milk.  Some dry stuff is OK but the dough should be sticky.

Pat into a round on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Cut a cross on top. Bake 45 minutes at 3500 F. Cool a bit before slicing.

By the way, today we painted the door for the front entry and installed it and the handle and lock set, so now the entry itself is finished!

Soda Bread with Blueberries

One of my treasured recipes is for Aunt May's Irish Soda Bread. It's in my book (Classic Comfort Food) and I throw it together for tea when I have the time and some buttermilk in the fridge.

Recently I ordered some more Irish Wholemeal Flour from King Arthur Flour. It is the perfect flour to use for this recipe, although I only use half wholemeal and half regular all-purpose flour. Today I also had some fat, ripe, deeply blue blueberries on hand. Never tried fresh blueberries in the soda bread before, but I'm glad I did. The soda bread is just firm enough a batter that the berries don't fall to the bottom like they sometimes do with blueberry muffins. The excellent flavors of wheat and buttermilk of the bread go really well with the tang of the blueberries...and they look pretty.

I only made half the batter, so it was about 1/2 cup of blueberries for this one. For the full recipe I would put in a cup of the blue beauties. Although you can certainly add some butter to the slices once baked, there is enough butter in the batter that you don't need it. With the blueberries bursting with warm juices, you really don't need anything else...except maybe a cup of tea.

Aunt May's Irish Soda Bread with Blueberries(the blueberries are not in Aunt May's version, but are yummy)

4 cups all-purpose flour (I used 2 cups all-purpose and 2 cups Irish whole meal flour)
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons sugar
8 oz. (1 stick) cold butter, in thin slices
2 ¼ cups buttermilk
1 cup blueberries

Sift the dry ingredients over the butter and cut in well with a fork or pastry blender.  Add the buttermilk and mix just until moist - don’t over-handle. Some dry stuff is OK, but the dough should be sticky. Turn dough out onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet, flatten the dough lightly, then pat on the blueberries. Pull dough gently over the fruit and pat into a rough circle. Cut a cross on top. Bake 45 minutes at 350⁰ F. Cool a bit before slicing.

Mothers Day is Coming

Hard to believe, but it is almost May. Not only that, Mothers Day is a bit early this year, since it is on Sunday, May 11 th. Now you might already have the perfect gift picked out, or even purchased, but it's also possible that you have no idea what to get Mom.

If she likes to cook and bake, consider giving her my beautiful cookbook Classic Comfort Food, full of delicious recipes and lovely photos. I created it for my Mom for Mothers Day last year. You know if it is good enough for my Mom it is probably good enough for yours, too.

There are classics like biscuits, soda bread, waffles, fried chicken, coconut cake, sugar cookies and more!

Now the great part...you can get $10 off the book if you order it through Blurb by May 2, 2013. That should get it to you just in time for the big day, since they will ship it either to you or to your Mom...whatever address you give them.

To order through Blurb and get that $10 off, click HERE or on the image of the book at the top right of this blog (in the web version). At checkout be sure to put in SHARING10 for the promotion code to get that discount. Don't delay...May 2nd will be here so quickly and Mothers Day is just around the corner.

Also, you can buy a copy just for yourself, or as a Graduation gift (perfect of a grad who will be living in their own place with a kitchen now), or as a gift for a wedding, too. Just use SHARING10 for the promotion code and you are good to go and save $10 on the book.

Not exactly a give-away, but a good deal for a wonderful cookbook!

Hugs and kisses, Elle

A Twist on Irish Soda Bread

It was rainy day before yesterday, the perfect weather for winter in Northern California. It's also good weather for baking. I have been trying to bake less because I'm reducing my caloric intake and Sweetie finds that when I bake less he weighs less, too. Tuesday all those thoughts went out the window because it was the perfect afternoon for tea and something baked. The questions was, what to bake? I have some new baking related cookbooks with recipes begging to be made...and I will. But sometimes the best thing to do is just to put a twist on an old familiar recipe. I discovered a few strips of bacon in the fridge, some pecans in the depths of the bottom shelf of the fridge and a nice jug of maple syrup from Costco that isn't getting any younger. Best of all I had a quart of buttermilk...more than enough for a nice loaf of Irish Soda Bread.

I love making Irish Soda Bread. It doesn't need any eggs, it goes together quickly, it is free form and looks very artisanal without trying, and it is delicious warm or cold. Fresh out of the oven (and cooled only slightly), it is heavenly.

So the twist this time was to make Pecan Bacon Maple Irish Soda Bread. Perhaps that makes it more Southern than Irish, but the original recipe is from my very Irish Aunt May, so I'm calling it that even with the additions.

The bacon was the star here, followed by the pecans. Who can hate bacon combined with pecans? The maple flavor was a harmonious background flavor, less assertive than I had thought it would be given that I used a full 1/2 cup! The buttermilk gave it moistness and a bit of a tang. I had to hide 3/4 of the loaf so that Sweetie wouldn't gobble it all up, it was that good! You don't need any additional butter, but it is hard to resist slathering on some. If you made up some maple butter that would be a grand addition.

The key to success with this recipe is to handle things gently, especially the dough once the liquid has been added. The mass of dough going into the oven looks like it barely holds together, but it bakes up as a nice craggy loaf with a tender interior. Too much or too firm handling will give you something more akin to a brick, so resist making a nice, neat loaf, OK?

Maple Pecan Bacon Soda Bread
Makes one large loaf

4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
8 oz. (2 sticks) cold butter, in thin slices
½ cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup cooked, crumbled bacon
½ cup maple syrup
2 cups buttermilk

Sift the dry ingredients over the butter and cut in well with a fork or pastry blender. Add nuts and bacon; mix in gently but well. Add the maple syrup to the buttermilk and make a well in the dry ingredients. Pour in the buttermilk mixture, then mix just until moist - don’t over handle.

Some dry stuff is OK but the dough should be sticky.

Pat into a round on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Cut a cross on top. Bake 45 minutes at 350 F. Cool a bit before slicing.

Good with a spread made of softened butter and maple syrup, whipped together.