Ingredients
Method
- Preheat a fan oven to 200C ( 220 non fan)
- Put the flours, salt, sugar and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl. Mix well.
- Make a well in the centre.
- Pour in most of the buttermilk and mix gently with a spatula or wooden spoon.
- Add more milk only if needed to form a soft, sticky dough.
- Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and gently shape into a round.
- Do not knead.
- Place on a lined tray.
- Cut a deep cross into the top.
- Put the bread into the centre of the oven with grease proof paper underneath.
- Bake for 50 minutes.
- To check if it is baked, turn it over and tap the bottom of the bread. It should sound hollow.
- Cool on a wire rack, wrapped in a clean tea towel before serving.
Notes
Brown soda bread will be a deep brown colour when baked and the crust will be quite tough. It needs wrapping whilst cooling to soften the crust a little.
It takes a good 45 to 50 minutes to bake fully. You do not want the centre of your bread to be wet or sticky when you cut it.
This is the original 'no knead' bread. A cake of soda bread is essentially a big scone for the want of a better explanation. Make sure you do your mixing with the dry ingredients only. Once they are combined well the main thing to get right after that is essentially making sure all the flour is wet with buttermilk.
Start by adding 375mls of buttermilk and as in the video above just pull the flour into the buttermilk to wet it. If you still have exposed floury bits after a minute or so add another 25mls. If you still find that there are dry bits left slowly add the remaining 25mls if needed. you may need the last 25 mls of buttermilk if you are using a flour with high protein content, which is a 'thirsty' flour.