Apron Free Cooking ~ Irish Soda Bread

By Noel Lizotte

St. Patrick’s day is com­ing! March 17th is a few short days away. My kids have always been great fans of St. Patrick’s. They have Irish her­itage on their dad’s side, as well as a bit of Irish tem­per them­selves, so I sup­pose it’s a nat­ural thing to enjoy cel­e­brat­ing St. Patrick’s day.

When they were in ele­men­tary school, it was easy to cel­e­brate. They would wear green clothes to school, to make sure they didn’t get pinched. Although, I’m pretty sure pinch­ing is not allowed in schools. The idea that wear­ing a green item could pro­tect them was enough incen­tive to dig through clos­ets look­ing for a spe­cial piece of cloth­ing. You know, I’m not sure why kids don’t think about these things ahead of time. But it was always a last minute panic and rush.

It only took me a cou­ple of years to fig­ure out we could avoid the panic. I started a tra­di­tion of hav­ing a gift on the break­fast table for each child. The gift bag usu­ally con­tained a green t-shirt or pair of socks along with some choco­late goody. The local bak­ery has made cup­cakes with green icing and a plas­tic sham­rock ring dec­o­ra­tion… those were pop­u­lar with my kids!

Once the kids started get­ting older they wanted to try eat­ing Irish food. Since this part of the coun­try is highly Ger­man in descent, it was tough to find some gen­uine Irish cui­sine. I’ve started a search for some recipes that we could make at home with only a lit­tle effort.

One of the first recipes we tried was for Irish Soda Bread. This is easy and tasty bread. It tastes best when eaten warm from the oven with but­ter and a cup of tea.

Irish Soda Bread

6 cups flour

¼ Tb bak­ing soda

¼ tsp salt

1 cup but­ter milk or sour milk

Pre­heat oven to 200 C / 400 F / Gas 6. Mix all the dry ingre­di­ents in a basin and make a well in the cen­tre. Stir in the milk vig­or­ously, if nec­es­sary add more milk, but the mix­ture should not be too thin. On a floured board, flat­ten the dough into a cir­cle approx­i­mately 4 cm (1 1/2 in) thick. With a floured knife make a cross in the dough. Place the bak­ing sheet into the pre­heated oven for approx­i­mately 40 minutes.

Approx­i­mate Nutri­tional Val­ues: Serv­ings 12. Amount Per Serv­ing: Calo­ries: 228, Total Fat: 1g, Cho­les­terol: 0mg, Sodium: 1027mg, Total Carbs: 47g, Dietary Fiber: 2g, Pro­tein: 7g.

Make it a meal: Serve with your favorite cof­fee or tea. If you’re look­ing for some extra sweet­ness, you might driz­zle your toasted bread with some honey. Raisins are often added to soda bread, you could mix them in before bak­ing the bread.

This recipe was orig­i­nally printed in a cook­book titled: British and Irish Cook­ing by author Tony Schnael­ing. There are a few ver­sions of the recipe to be found on the Inter­net and in cook­books. I pre­fer this one for its simplicity.

Noel Lizotte is break­ing free of cor­po­rate stress with con­ve­nience cook­ing! www.apronfreecooking.com.

Posted by Noel Lizotte on Mar 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.