🇮🇪 IrelandCatalog recipe
A dense, brown-crusted loaf leavened with nothing but baking soda and buttermilk, mixed in minutes and torn warm into thick, butter-soaked wedges.
For 8 servings.
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Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F) and whisk both flours, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl.
Make a well and pour in the buttermilk; mix quickly with one hand into a soft, shaggy, slightly wet dough.
💡 Stop as soon as it comes together — working it like a yeast dough makes the loaf tough and gummy.
Turn the dough onto a floured surface and pat gently into a round loaf about 4cm thick.
Set on a floured baking sheet and cut a deep cross through the top with a sharp knife — this helps the thick center cook through.
Bake 40 minutes, until deep brown and hollow-sounding when the base is tapped.
Cool on a rack at least 15 minutes before slicing.
Soda bread spread fast once bicarbonate of soda reached rural Ireland in the 1830s, since it needed no yeast, no proving time and no oven more sophisticated than a pot over a fire. It remains the loaf most Irish households still make from memory.
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