Tea & dinner (the household bread, companion to all meals)
Irish Soda Bread
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A dense, rustic loaf of wheat flour, raised with soda (bicarbonate) and buttermilk, marked with a deep cross. Tight crumb, thick crust, a slight tang: bread without kneading or waiting, to be broken still warm.
Tea & dinner (the household bread, companion to all meals)
A dense, rustic loaf of wheat flour, raised with soda (bicarbonate) and buttermilk, marked with a deep cross. Tight crumb, thick crust, a slight tang: bread without kneading or waiting, to be broken still warm.
I am often asked how such a quick bread can be made, and I answer: by the grace of soda and buttermilk, which marry and make the dough rise without the help of any leaven. Mix quickly, do not knead — maltreated dough becomes heavy as a bad argument. Cut a cross into it with a knife, to let it breathe in the oven, and take it out golden after half an hour. This is the bread of our Cork neighbours, and it accompanies both the evening tea and the Sunday bacon.
Ingredients
- •Wheat flour — four cups (base)
- •Buttermilk — enough to bind (leavening and acidity)
- •Bread soda (bicarbonate) — a teaspoon (leavening agent)
- •Salt — a teaspoon (seasoning)
How it was made : Bicarbonate of soda ('bread soda') spread in kitchens from the 1840s and transformed Irish domestic breadmaking: no more need for yeast or a communal bread oven. Buttermilk, a by-product of butter churning, provided the acidity that reacts with the soda to leaven the dough. The scored cross, both practical (baking) and symbolic, is traditional.
Sources : Eliza Acton, Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1845 · Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management, 1861