Brown Soda Bread
Inspired by Myrtle and Darina Allen and the Ballymaloe Cooking School, County Cork, Ireland.
Photography by Talitha Schroeder
Ingredients
1 ¾ cup coarse whole-wheat pastry flour, preferably stone-ground such as Weisenberger Mill
1 ¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra as needed
1 heaping teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons soft unsalted butter
1 good local egg
1 ⅔ cup buttermilk (try a good local brand if available, like J.D. Country Milk in Kentucky)
Directions
Preheat oven to 450℉. Add the flours to a large, wide bowl and sprinkle over the salt and baking soda. Using your hands, mix the salt and baking soda into the flour, lifting the mixture up with your fingers to lighten it. Blend in the softened butter.
Beat the egg and buttermilk together in a small bowl.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the buttermilk mixture With your open hand (or a rubber spatula), stir the buttermilk into the flour mixture, from the center out – working in a circle. By the time you reach the sides of the bowl, the dough should be thoroughly mixed and ready to turn out. It will be soft but not sticky.
Sprinkle a work surface with a little bit of flour. Turn the dough out onto it. Flour your hands and even up the edges of the dough before transferring it to a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Once the dough’s on the pan, shape into a round loaf about 1 ½ inches thick. Bless the dough by cutting a deep cross into its surface, then prick each of the four sections to let the fairies out.
Bake for 15 minutes, turn the oven down to 400℉ and bake an additional 15 minutes. After the second 15 minutes, turn the loaf upside down and bake for another 5-10 minutes until fully cooked (the bottom should sound hollow when tapped.)
Cool on a wire rack. Try to let your loaf cool completely before slicing. Enjoy with salted Irish butter, some good aged Irish cheddar, or smoked salmon. If you don’t eat it all the first day, it will be delicious toasted on the second.
Bonus recipe!
Brown Bread Ice Cream
A former pastry chef at Holly HIll Inn used to make this for dinner service whenever we featured a Celtic menu. It’s a great way to use up leftover brown soda bread in a deliciously unexpected way!
Mix 2 cups coarse brown breadcrumbs with ½ cup granulated sugar and ½ cup brown sugar (either light or dark is fine) and spread out on a lined sheet pan. Bake at 450℉, stirring often, until the sugar caramelizes and coats the bread crumbs. Remove the breadcrumbs (still on the liner) from the pan and cool completely, then pulse or crush into smaller bits. Fold into a half-gallon of softened vanilla ice cream, then refreeze until ready to serve.
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