Traditional Irish Soda Bread with Homemade Buttermilk

As you all know by now, my mother came down for the week and while she was here I got a few new kitchen items, some of which I got to use making today's recipe, or was this recipe an excuse to use them? It doesn't matter, what does is the delicious bread recipe below!

Since today is St. Patrick's day, what better way to celebrate than to make a traditional Irish soda bread?! Plus this won't give you a hangover! This recipe is super quick to make and even quicker to bake! The whole thing, including cooking time takes about an hour and it’s a no knead bread for all you kneading haters!

Now before I start, I ran across a problem right from the beginning: I didn't have any buttermilk! I also didn't have a desire to go to the grocery store for one ingredient... so I made my own, which is very fast and extremely simple to make.

Homemade Buttermilk

Ingredients

-1 Cup of whole milk (since the bread call for 2 Cups of buttermilk just double the recipe)

-Acid of choice, either: 1 and ¾ Tbs of cream of tartar

                                        1 Tbs of white vinegar

                                        or 1 Tbs of lemon juice

I didn’t use whole milk, as all I had in my fridge was Skim, which has little to no fat, but I didn’t particularly care as it was going into my bread. But if you want real buttermilk, definitely use whole milk, as it will definitely not give you the same results.

Mix your milk and acid of choice (mine was white vinegar) stir well and let sit in a warm area for 15 minutes. Your milk should start to curdle if you’re using whole milk; stir it properly and voila!

I don’t recommend using skim for this, but again, I wasn’t in the mood to walk to the grocery store for one item and my bread turned out quite well all the same. 

Traditional Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients

-4 Cups of All purpose flour (I mixed in 1/2 cup of brown into 3 1/2 cups of white instead)

-1 Tbs of granulated sugar

-1 tsp of baking soda

-1 tsp of salt

-2 Cups of Buttermilk

In a large bowl, combine flour or flours, if the case. 

Then add sugar, baking soda and salt; mix until combined and make a well in the center.

Add all of your buttermilk and mix together until it forms a soft dough. Turn dough onto a heavily floured surface! Take my advice to heart, heavily flour that surface, or you’ll learn the hard way like I did. This dough is extremely sticky and will feel unmanageable if you don’t.

Use your hands to mix it all properly and form into a smooth ball.

Place onto a greased baking sheet and with a sharp knife, score a large X onto the top. Place in the oven at 425F for about 35 minutes or until browned and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

I was having a hard time scoring because my dough was too sticky in the middle, so I sprinkled a little bit of flour on top to help make nice deep scores, which is which my bread looks floury in the finished photos.

There you have it, a quick and nutritious bread that is wonderfully delicious with butter and honey or served with a nice hearty meal. 

Enjoy and have a merry St. Patrick's day!