Easy Irish Soda Bread Recipe

Hey , I'm John Connell .

And today on preppy kitchen , we're making an easy delicious Irish soda bread .

So let's get started to make this recipe .

You'll need all purpose flour , cold butter , an egg , some sugar , baking soda , salt , cold butter , milk raisins or currents are optional .

First off , set that oven to 4 25 you want it nice and hot .

You also wanna grab a cast iron skillet or a baking sheet .

Both will work .

This gives you a nice crispier crust though , into a large bowl .

I'm adding four cups or 480 g of all purpose flour .

I'm using a scale .

It is the best way to get delicious everything .

So I highly recommend one .

If you don't have a scale , here's the deal .

You're gonna wanna fluff the flour in the container , Sprinkle it into your cup , level it off .

And that's how you get an accurate cup full of flour if you scoop it up .

Oh my gosh .

You're adding a ton of extra flour , 1.5 teaspoons of baking soda .

This is such an interesting recipe because the chemical reaction to make it was actually discovered by native Americans they used pearl ash to leave in some flat cakes they would make .

In Ireland , it became popular because yeast wasn't very available .

It still makes a delicious nutritious bread .

Right now .

I'm adding one teaspoon of kosher salt .

If you're using a fine grain salt , I would use half the salt because these are pretty large salt .

Granules , like little salt pebbles .

I'm also adding four tablespoons of granulated sugar .

This will give it a little bit of sweetness and also a little bit of softness as well .

Ok .

Whisk this up .

I'm setting this aside just for a moment because I wanna grab my one egg plop that into a container .

I got the shell out .

Don't worry .

I'm also adding one and two thirds cups of cold buttermilk .

This is the acid that's gonna react with the baking soda .

So in you go whisk that up , buttermilk is really important in the recipe .

It has the acid that reacts with the baking soda and makes everything nice and fluffy .

But if you don't have it , you can't cheat it using whole milk and vinegar for this amount of whole milk .

I would add like a tablespoon and a half of a white vinegar .

Just mix it in and set aside for a few minutes and then add that with the egg back to our bowl .

We need to add our butter in , it's in the fridge .

It needs to be nice and cold .

So let's get it out nice and hard four tablespoons of cold butter .

It's about 75 g .

And now I'm just gonna whittle away at it and add that into my flour .

This butter is giving us some extra richness and it's also gonna play with the texture of our bread as well .

Now we're gonna use our clean hands or a pastry cutter to work the cold butter in .

You want little pieces of butter through out your Irish soda bread , not tiny , tiny little pieces all over but like larger chunks .

Because when they go into the oven at 4 25 you're gonna have steam pockets coming up as gonna help it rise as well as making it taste delicious for those of you who haven't had soda bread before .

It's amazing , slather it with butter .

Enjoy it with a cup of coffee or tea or just grab and go for an anytime snack .

There go .

That looks nice all throughout .

Create a well in the center .

Now for the fun part , I'm gonna pour in this buttermilk mixture .

Once again , I don't wanna waste any of it and use a spatula to fold it in .

We do not wanna overmix this at all .

The key to having like a nice tender crumb in the inside is to have little pieces of butter and mixing until it is just combined .

Do not overmix doing that will activate the gluten and really cause the Irish soda bread to shrink back down after it cools and be kind of dense .

This is called a quick bread in case you didn't know banana bread , zucchini bread , soda bread , they're all similar .

We're using baking soda or sodium bicarbonate to activate the leavening process that mixes with an acid that you've added in and delicious .

Amazing things happen .

Quick breads were actually very popular in America even more so than yeast breads a long time ago .

This is almost ready right now .

You can add in optional things like raisins or currents , Sprinkle those in and it could be raisins , curs , candied fruit nuts .

You could have orange zest .

Almost anything will work in this .

We're just gonna fold this together to finish the mixing and distribute our reasons .

In this case , you can let me know how you like Irish soda bread at home .

I know a lot of you have family recipes that are passed down and that much more special .

So I love hearing every family's individual take on a recipe , lightly flour , the surface of your counter just a little bit .

We just need to form this into a loaf .

So it looks nice and pretty .

We're not gonna need the dough .

This gets formed into a loaf , just bring it together .

And um you can add a little bit of flour to the outside .

It is a very wet dough .

I have my little Freddie .

Now it goes into my cast iron pan .

You could also have this on a baking sheet with parchment paper or even a cake pan will work too plop that right in there before it goes into the oven , we need a cross on top .

So just use a knife .

I like to run it in flour first because this is so wet and adding this Exxon is gonna help the dough kind of like split in a controlled fashion .

So it bakes more evenly .

Our bread is going into the oven in 25 to 30 minutes at 4 25 until it is puffed and golden .

You'll see what it looks like when it comes out of the oven , out of the oven is golden and smells amazing .

Let it cool , adjusted it .

Then it's time for a slice .

I hope I was able to describe soda bread and do it justice .

It is so delicious , crunchy on the outside , soft and amazing on the inside kissed with just a little bit of sweetness .

I hope you get a chance to make this recipe and if you like the video , check out my quick bread playlist .