Tips for making the best Irish soda bread

In my childhood, March meant my mother’s rendition of the golden, raisin-studded round loaves that were simultaneously making an annual appearance in bakeries citywide.

Known by Chicagoans-at-large as Irish soda bread, they’re perhaps most famously seen — on the South Side, at least — in sliced form, in the non-plastic-cup-wielding hands of St. Paddy’s Day partygoers. It was our link to the auld sod, the bread of our ancestors.

Wasn’t it?

It was only after I moved to Ireland in my mid-twenties that I discovered the stuff I’d understood to be the nation’s quintessential carb was in fact something of a superfluity, available in shops but by no means a staple. Such a minor player is it in Ireland’s national roster of baked goods, that when I ask my Irish fiance what its correct name is, he shrugs and finally offers, soda bread with raisins?

Far more ubiquitous on the Irish table, I quickly learned, is brown bread, a crumbly, hearty loaf that’s perfect for sopping up soups and stews, and perhaps even better enjoyed with just a smear of butter. In its looks, taste and preparation, brown bread is beautifully simple, yet its centrality to Irish cuisine should not be underestimated; indeed, according to Jimmy Griffin, award-winning baker and proprietor of Griffin’s Bakery, a 135-year-old Galway City institution, this humble loaf is nothing less than “our national bread, rooted in our traditions, our very soul and fabric.”

For Darina Allen, the highly-influential Irish cook and owner of the world-renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, brown bread has a powerful connection to the idea of home. She recalls that her mother prepared it “virtually every day of her life.” Of herself and her eight siblings, Allen notes, “Wherever we were, her bread was one of the things we looked forward to when we came home.”

If brown bread is such an elemental part of Irish cooking, then, how did a pale, fruit-speckled loaf come to be thought of by Chicagoans as Ireland’s definitive bread? I suspect that a lack of access to Irish whole wheat flour at the time that many of those Chicagoans’ Irish ancestors came to the city may be responsible. (Even today’s American whole wheat flour is far finer than its Irish counterpart; the recipe here uses wheat germ to replicate the slightly gritty texture of authentic brown bread.) These Irish emigres improvised with American flour; the results would produce, over time, not an Irish tradition exactly, but an Irish-American one.

Five years in Ireland taught me well that Irish and Irish-American are not the same things — indeed, they are sometimes wildly different things. That is not to say, however, that the traditions we create in the places we come to be are less important than those of the places we’ve come from.

On the contrary, as these new traditions pass from one generation to the next, they develop the power to transport us, just like Chef Allen, home. For my part, I believe I’ll take my dinner with a side of brown bread this St. Patrick’s Day — but I’ll save room for a slice of Mom’s soda bread for dessert.

Free lance writer Cate Huguelet grew up in Evergreen Park. She traveled to Ireland in 2004 to complete a three-month editorial internship, and wound up staying in the country for almost six years. She now is based in Tennessee.

Irish Soda Bread Recipe

Whether you are a fan of the original or the sweeter variety, here are some tips to get you on your way to delicious Irish soda bread just in time for St. Patrick’s Day:

What is soda bread?
Soda bread gets its name because you use baking soda, or “bread soda” as it is known in Ireland, to make the bread rise. The baking soda also replaces the yeast and time spent kneading the dough. According to the Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread, the traditional recipe only calls for baking soda, flour, sour milk or buttermilk, and salt. This variation of the popular St. Patrick’s Day food does not keep, and would need to be made fresh every couple days. The traditional Irish soda bread is far from the sweet white bread loaded with raisins that may come to mind.

White soda bread recipe
The Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread’s has a recipe for traditional white soda bread. 

Click here to see how to make it.

But there are other variations. For brown, or wheat soda bread, use whole wheat flour. Irish-American soda bread is sweeter and contains more ingredients, including an egg, sugar and butter, and sometimes sour cream or yogurt. Raisins and caraway seeds are popular add-ins.

The Irish Heritage Club of Seattle sponsors an annual Irish Soda Bread contest. It breaks the entries into three divisions: traditional Irish soda bread, traditional brown Irish soda bread and glorified Irish soda bread. The club advises contestants not to glorify their bread to the point that it becomes a cake.

Chef Rory O’Connell told Epicurious that cutting a cross on top of the bread began to help the bread bake evenly. It has since taken on other Christian and superstitious meanings, like being there to bless the bread or to drive the devil from it

Tips
The Irish Heritage Club suggests using unbleached, fresh, locally milled flour of the soft wheat or pastry flour variety. Avoid using self-rising flour, which already contains baking powder and salt, and hard flour. It also recommends the use of a fresh box of baking soda to prevent unnecessarily dense bread. If you do not have soured or cultured milk on hand, you can made your own by adding one tablespoon of lemon juice to two cups of low-fat milk.

Bread Making with Bill & Sheila
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