Brick

Irish Soda Bread. The oven rise par­tially closed the knife cuts. Rus­tic looks awe­some. Ben Pol­lock photo

In Food Sec­tion World, this long-evolved Irish Soda Bread recipe would be pub­lished before St. Patrick’s Day. But in Brick World, I bake a loaf on St. Paddy’s, rely­ing on col­lected recipes and some­times a new one that pops up. Brick could sched­ule the recipe for March 16, 2013, but why wait?

Every news­pa­per every year notes that the orig­i­nal of this quick bread (refer­ring to bak­ing soda and/or pow­der, not yeast) was unsweet­ened, essen­tially a round-loaf whole-wheat ver­sion of hard­tack. These arti­cles then decry the Amer­i­can­ized eggy sug­ary raisiny white-flour ver­sion. The authors all con­clude with their semi­au­then­tic, palate­able compromises.

The fol­low­ing is my amal­ga­ma­tion of some of the com­pro­mises. [March 2013 update: Below I’ve made the sugar 1–2 Table­spoons instead of just 1. The smaller is more savory, but 2 Table­spoons brings out the fla­vors; this still is far below the sweet­ener called for in many recipes.]

• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 Table­spoon car­away seeds
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 tea­spoons lemon juice
• 3 cups whole wheat flour (12 oz.)
• 1 cup white flour (4.25 oz.)
• 1–2 Table­spoons sugar
• 2 tea­spoons salt
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
• 3/4 tea­spoon bak­ing powder
• 1/2 cup milk

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Plump raisins and car­away by soak­ing together a few min­utes in 1/8 cup liq­uid (maybe 1 Table­spoon whiskey and 1 Table­spoon water). Com­bine 1 1/2 cups milk with lemon juice, let sit a few minutes.

Shaped dough. It’s on the wet side this time so the knife cuts were shal­low, but will allow the loaf to expand fully. Ben Pol­lock photo

In a large mix­ing bowl, stir together all of the dry ingre­di­ents. Stir in the raisins and seeds.

Stir in the soured milk, mix­ing well for about 2 min­utes with sturdy spoon or a hand. Add, 1 Table­spoon at a time, the remain­ing milk — until all the flour is moist­ened and sticky. You may not need all that half cup milk, depend­ing on kitchen humidity.

Grease a cookie sheet or pizza pan OR cut a sec­tion of parch­ment paper to fit. Lightly dust with flour. Form the dough into a tight ball, place on the pan parch­ment sheet and flat­ten the loaf slightly, to about 3 inches thick. With a sharp knife, cut a cross or other basic pat­tern, about 1/2 inch deep.

Bake for 35–40 min­utes, until the out­side is medium-to-dark brown and the loaf sounds hol­low when tapped. Serve imme­di­ately. The loaf, wrapped, will keep a few days. Toasts nicely. Can serve just with but­ter (my choice), jam or the tra­di­tional slices of ched­dar and apples.