recipes@decwrl.UUCP (09/18/87)
Copyright (C) 1987 USENET Community Trust Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the USENET copyright notice and the title of the newsgroup and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the USENET Community Trust or the original contributor. .RH MOD.RECIPES-SOURCE SODA-BREAD B "15 Apr 87" 1987 .RZ "IRISH SODA BREAD" "Two white soda loaves" This is a basic soda bread, following the Irish mode. I scaled up the recipe from one of Beard's, and changed it some. It is quite crusty, and really all-purpose. This soda bread takes around a third the time and a half the effort of a comparable yeast bread. Since no yeast bread is much like it, I don't know what would be comparable. People who have never tried a soda bread will note many differences, like the order you add things (flour and then the liquid...). .IH "2 loaves" .IG "8 cups" "white flour (unbleached)" "800 g" .IG "3\-4 cups" "buttermilk," "8\-10 dl" at room temperature .IG "1 tsp" "salt" "5 ml" .IG "2 tsp" "baking powder" "10 ml" .IG "1.5 tsp" "baking soda" "7.5 ml" .IG "1 cup" "currants" "150 g" (optional) .IG "1 tsp" "butter or oil" "5 ml" .PH .SK 1 Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. .SK 2 Preheat the oven to .TE 350 175 . .SK 3 Stir in buttermilk, a cup at a time. You should make a fairly soft dough that will nonetheless hold its shape. Thus, you may need the full amount of buttermilk. .SK 4 Turn the dough out onto a well-floured board (this is a stock phrase; do it anyway). Knead until it is smooth and soft, probably about 7 minutes. You should have to keep adding a little flour to the board for the first few minutes to keep the dough from sticking. .SK 5 Are you using currants? Knead them in, then. Or don't, accordingly. .SK 6 Tear the dough in half. Form each half into a ball. With a knife, slash a cross in the top. .SK 7 Place the balls, cross up, well apart, on a greased baking sheet. .SK 8 Put this sheet, bread side up, into the oven. .SK 9 Bake for 35 or 40 minutes. The loaves are done when they sound hollow at a knocking hand. They should also get to be a nice light brown color. The cross will split open, and the resultant points will get hard and dark brown. Soda bread has a tendency to crack in the oven. This is no big deal. .SH NOTES You can substitute, per James Beard's recommendation, about 4 cups of whole-wheat flour for half the white. Since this will be heavier, use about 40% more baking powder. The bread made this way is markedly different. .SH RATING .I Difficulty: easy to moderate. .I Time: 30 minutes building, 45 minutes baking. .I Precision: Measure the ingredients. .WR David Hendler Aiken Computation Lab (Harvard Univ.) hendler@harvard.harvard.edu