Recipe: Irish Soda Bread for St. Patrick’s Day (or Any Day)

I am not a cook, and I don’t aspire to be one. But like many of us cooped up at home, I have cooked more than usual this past year. One of my discoveries this year has been Irish soda bread.

Although I am part Irish, and my mother always celebrated her Irish heritage, I never had soda bread growing up. In fact, I’m not sure I’d heard of soda bread until last March when I happened upon it for sale in my local grocery store. So I bought it. Yummy! Heavy and sweet and so good with the corned beef I made for St. Patrick’s Day.

Then last summer I bought too much milk, and a gallon soured. I hated to throw it out (that’s my Scotch heritage coming through), so I looked for recipes that would tolerate sour milk. I found an Irish soda bread recipe and made two loaves.

Mine didn’t look as pretty as the loaves from the grocery store, but it was still tasty.

Since then, I’ve landed on an Irish soda bread recipe that uses buttermilk. I’ve made it frequently and made my own adaptations. I make it with a mix of dried blueberries and golden raisins (because that’s what I had on hand when I first made it). I like those better than dark raisins. I also doubled the recipe, because—why not?

Here is the link to the recipe I found. I also suggest The Fannie Farmer Cookbook recipe for Irish soda bread, which has only four ingredients and recommends a longer cooking time. Soda bread is heavy and dense, and my loaves often remain doughy after baked.

This is my variation of the recipe (which makes two loaves), and has been influenced by both of the recipes cited above:

Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
3/4 cup golden raisins
3/4 cup dried blueberries
2 cups low-fat buttermilk
Cooking spray

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°, though my oven does better at 375°, so see what works for you.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda in large bowl. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal (this is the hardest part for me — what does coarse meal look like?). Stir in raisins. Add buttermilk and stir until moist. At this point, I need to use my hands to get it all mixed.
3. Split dough into halves. Put each half on a lightly floured surface and knead until shaped into a rounded mound. Again, hands work best.
4. Place each rounded half onto a cookie sheet or into an 8-inch pie pan coated with cooking spray.
5. Bake at 350° to 375° for 30 minutes (though Fannie Farmer suggests 45 minutes) or until lightly browned. When cool cut into wedges — I get 8 wedges out of each loaf, but you can make smaller wedges if you want.
6. Eat slathered with butter.

You’ll note I say nothing about cutting the traditional cross on the top of the bread. That is for three reasons. First, I didn’t know about it when I started making this bread. Second, my bread doesn’t have a nice smooth top like so many loaves you see. And third, why bother? Just eat it.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!