It's hard to be beat homemade soda bread

The nicest brown bread I ever had was made by the grandmother. It was a light, moist bread and seemed to have a wholesome, more colourful tinge to it. My mother’s brown bread was… funnily enough, just brown. I have spent years trying to recreate my grandmother’s brown bread but all to no avail. Was it an egg that she added or was it just the sun shining on her kitchen table on that particular Sunday evening?

Brown soda bread is like a family Coat of Arms; no two families have the same one. Everyone remains devoted to their own recipe and such recipes are guarded with great care. In all the Ox Mountain region, in homes where bread is baked, no two houses have the same recipe.

Bread soda 

While bread-making in general goes back thousands of years, soda bread was only first made in Ireland in Victorian times, after sodium carbonate (a precursor to today’s sodium bicarbonate or bread soda) was first produced in 1791 by Frenchman Nicolas Leblanc.

Kells Wholemeal, a family business in Co Kilkenny, with seven generations of milling expertise behind them, give a nice potted history of soda bread on their very attractive website.

Following the arrival of baking soda, soda bread began to grow in popularity. Irish-grown wheat that was, at best, marginally suitable for making yeasted bread was perfectly suited to the new soda-raised bread. With this new ingredient, bread could be made with locally grown and milled wheat and buttermilk (at the time a byproduct of butter or cheesemaking). 

This breadmaking process was quick and simple and the ingredients were cheap, so it was a popular choice. During the Irish Famine, in 1845, soda bread became a staple food. Everyone could make soda bread at home, as it could be cooked in a pot, over the fire and there was no need to have an oven. This traditional cooking method resulted in the distinctive rounded loaf shape that is often associated with classic soda bread today.

Experimentation 

As I mentioned previously, I like to bake. Developing one’s own brown bread recipe is a special experience. In the early days, I experimented. Fresh milk or Buttermilk? Butter or Margarine? Baking soda or baking powder? Wholemeal, bran or wheat germ? Then there was the oven to consider. Gas, electric or the range? How hot the oven and how long to leave your bread therein? And then, there was every possible permutation of all the above.

I quickly discovered that an oven that was not hot enough was lethal. Baking at the right temperature but for too long is also not good. I also discovered that a mixture that is too dry will never rise. I discovered that bread-making is a scientific process – a chemical reaction. The ingredients must be right but strangely, that’s only part of the equation. The consistency – not too dry and not too mushy – must also be right but that too is only piece of a longer story.

Let’s look at the basics. Milk is the liquid that is used to create the dough. There is buttermilk and ordinary milk. Ordinary milk that is gone off is neither sour milk nor buttermilk, it is rotten milk and should be thrown out. To keep bread soft, shortening is required. Butter is best but will drive your cholesterol sky high. Margarine is a good substitute but will probably kill you quicker. Light sunflower oil is a good compromise.

Then there are the dry ingredients; flour, salt, bread soda or raising agent and any other seeds or grains you might like to add to fancy up your bread. Happily mixing all the above ingredients, in the space of thirty minutes, you can create bread that may either resemble a concrete block or a roasted marshmallow. Ideally what you are looking for is something in between.

Bed and Breakfast 

I never really standardised my soda bread recipe until I started my own Bed and Breakfast. To impress guests, I baked every morning. As well as perfecting my recipe, daily baking excited all kinds of positive reactions... You baked specially for us - The smell in your kitchen is so welcoming - This is the first place we’ve stayed where we got home baking - and inevitably… Can I get your recipe?

I discovered during this time that soda bread is best eaten fresh. After about twelve hours, the freshness goes and while such bread is perfectly edible for a few days, it loses its softness. Unless you intend to share with a friend, don’t be tempted to bake too much at one time. Bake every day if you need to, it only takes a few minutes and you will always have fresh bread.

I seldom measure ingredients and as I said, the most important thing about making bread is the science of baking. You assemble the raw material, you get the machinery right and off you go, learning lessons along the way. My Three Commandments of Baking are: the right oven temperature, the right raising agent, the right consistency of the dough. As you may have noticed, the ingredients are not on that list.

Open fire 

God be good to all the mothers and grandmothers who baked, day in, day out, to keep us fed. Oftentimes their bread was baked in poor conditions over open fires. I am sure they were not bothered about the science involved. Their bread-making was work and prayer and art and love, all combined in one essential daily task.

To experience what baking was like for our grandmothers, I decided to try baking on an open fire. This also took a bit of figuring out. The first requirement was a free-standing oven. Known as a Bastible Oven, such items are round, flat-bottomed pots. They have a lid and are made of cast iron. They are still to be found in antique shops and in the overgrown cottage gardens of the Ox Mountains.

The first requirement was to bring a turf fire up to a level where it contains a good supply of red coals. I then prepared the dough in the usual way and popped it in the floured oven. The oven then needs to be set one side the of the open fire and the coals from the fire placed under and on top of the oven. Such coals need to be relocated and replaced throughout the baking. 

In the same time as it would take in a modern oven, your bread is baked. With practice, this proved to be my finest bread. It was even imbued with the aroma of the turf fire. Magic! It isn’t practical to bake like this every day, and that of course was the greatest insight into what bread-making was like for our grandmothers.

I hope I have given enough information here to tempt some readers to make their own unique brown soda bread. I have never seen my exact recipe printed in any book or aired on any cookery channel… and I’m definitely not sharing it here!