Tuesday, March 20, 2012

TWD #4 - Irish Soda Bread


To put it plainly, making bread makes me happy. I've made bread every single week since I made the white loaves for the first Tuesdays With Dorie post and it's something I look forward to all week long. Still, I wasn't terribly excited to make the Irish Soda Bread for this week's TWD post, although with only 4 ingredients it couldn't have been easier.

I don't like raisins or dried fruit in general so I left it out and stuck to the original recipe. And I didn't have buttermilk on hand so I used regular milk. It was skim so the dough was a bit thinner than I imagine it would have been if I'd used buttermilk, but it baked up all the same.


This is one of the only mix and bake breads I've ever made.


There's no rise time to develop gluten or flavor and I think it shows. I always have a hard time with slashing my bread. The dough pulls and it's just not pretty. I think I've read somewhere that oiling the knife before you slash can give you a cleaner cut, but I haven't tried it yet. And of course there's always razor blades, but with my clumsiness and tendancy for self-injury I've avoided that as well. I could show you pictures but some of you might be eating.


There's no rise time to develop gluten or flavor and I think it shows. One of the things Jake and I both noticed immediately was the smell of the bread when it was cut. Not pleasant. But once you get past the smell, the taste isn't bad. It's more dense than any of the other breads I've made before, but all in all, not bad.

The recipe says that the bread will turn hard overnight but mine didn't. The bag I stored it in showed moisture in the morning, though. You can find the recipe on the blogs of this week's hosts, Cathy of My Culinary Mission and Carla of Chocolate Moosey and links to all the other bakers' posts at the Tuesdays With Dorie LYL post.

16 comments:

  1. I'm a big fan of this bread because of the short prep time... and I love that you don't have to wait for a rise. Your cuts are beautiful, too. Yay for Central Market Organic Skim Milk! :D

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    1. I love Central Market. Hands-down my favorite grocery store! I might give the bread a second chance--add a little sugar or cheese or something. Cathy's Gruyere version looked amazing. Any bread that is ready in about an hour probably deserves a second chance!

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  2. I love baking bread too! It's therapeutic. :)
    Your loaf looks great, although like you, I prefer yeasted breads.

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    1. I just love making toast every morning knowing that I made the bread with my own two hands (and my KitchenAid mixer). But yep, definitely a yeast-bread fan!

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  3. I kept mine plain as well. Great post!

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    1. Yours came out so much prettier! I'm really going to have to work on my slashing...

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  4. I don't get why the smell would be bad, mine was ok but it still looks great :)

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    1. Not sure why it smelled weird, but my husband smelled it and some of the other bloggers mentioned it so I know I didn't imagine it.

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  5. a few people complained about the aroma of this bread. the sourness? you're just a yeasted bread baker at heart!

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    1. Oh totally! I ended up putting off making your wheaty loaves this weekend because I already had plenty of bread for this week and I was running out of freezer space but it's on the agenda for Friday. Yea yeast bread!

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  6. Yours smelled? I don't remember mine having a distinct smell (minus the aroma when baking). I'd say maybe the buttermilk, but you didn't use any. Hmm

    The dough wasn't easy to slash that's for sure w the stickiness. Yours still look great though! Thanks for joining me!

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  7. I had a hard time cutting the x's too, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I can't believe you only made one! I totally thought of you when I was making all of my different variations, lol.

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  8. Our bread smelled delicious, though not yeasty. I found we had to knead it just enough for the gluten to develop, but not enough for the end product to become tough.

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  9. Glad you tried it even if it wasn't appealing. Sounds great to bake bread every week hooray!!

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  10. I mostly work with yeast bread, so in a way this didn't even feel like bread :-)
    But it looks like your loaf still came out well.

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  11. Your loaf looks great, even though it wasn't your favorite ever. I also prefer yeasted breads but I think this would be great in a pinch. Like if I forgot to make bread to go with the soup and only had an hour, especially since it has so few ingredients and is so easy.

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