The Easiest Scottish Soda Bread Recipe - Larder Love (2024)

FAQs

Is there a difference between soda bread and Irish soda bread? ›

Sweeter Soda Bread

On this side of the Atlantic, what we call "Irish soda bread" is more rich and sweet, usually studded with raisins and caraway seeds. These cakey, scone-like loaves often include eggs and butter for tenderness and more flavor.

The whole purpose of kneading bread dough is to form a network of gluten fibers. However, in soda bread where gluten is not needed, these filaments just make the bread tough. To avoid chewy bread, chose a low-protein (and therefore low-gluten) flour.

The Irishmen learned to adapt to this climate by growing soft wheat that is lower in gluten. The type of flour from this wheat is not compatible with the yeast to make the dough rise; thus, they use baking soda instead to make the famed Irish Soda Bread.

Serve a slice with a stew.

Traditionally, Irish soda bread is served with a slow-simmered beef and barley stew.

Healthy bread for yeast-free diets: Soda bread

Wholemeal varieties are healthiest. It's also super easy to make from home, try this simple soda bread recipe. Nutritional breakdown: Rankin Irish Brown Soda Bread: 82 cals, 3.8g protein, 16.1g carbs (2.3g sugars) 1.3g fat (0.2gsats) 2.3g fibre, 0.2g salt.

Whole-wheat soda bread is a healthy addition to your plate! One serving—a 1/2-inch-thick slice—provides complex carbohydrates for sustained energy, protein, fiber, and vitamins and minerals.

If you've ever tried Irish soda bread and not liked it, don't go running off yet! Chances are good that the bread you ate suffered from one of three common problems: improper amount of baking soda (a gross, salty-bitter taste), over cooking (a dry, chalky texture), or undercooking (a soggy, doughy center).

The oldest recipe for soda bread, widely syndicated from Ireland's Newry Times in 1836, says the dough was "as soft as could possibly be handled...the softer the better." Thirteen years and 180 miles down the road, the Waterford Times described it as "wetter than pie crust, too stiff to pour, but not stiff enough to ...

Seriously, as with all breads that do not have yeast, you won't want to overwork your dough. If you feel like you have to knead the dough together, don't knead more than 5-6 times, max. Too much kneading will create a hard dense crumb on the bread.

And finally, don't immediately cut into the Fast Irish Soda bread when you pull it out of the oven. Although this bread is best served warm, cutting into it too quickly will turn the bread gummy.

Should soda bread dough be sticky? ›

Note that the dough will be a little sticky, and quite shaggy (a little like a shortcake biscuit dough). You want to work it just enough so the flour is just moistened and the dough just barely comes together. Shaggy is good. If you over-work the dough the bread will end up tough.

The most traditional doneness test calls for thumping the hot bread in the center to hear if it's hollow-sounding. A more foolproof indication is temperature; the loaf will register 200°F to 205°F when an instant-read thermometer is inserted in the center of the bread. Let the bread cool.

In Ulster, the wholemeal variety is usually known as wheaten bread and is normally sweetened, while the term "soda bread" is restricted to the white savoury form. In the southern provinces of Ireland, the wholemeal variety is usually known as brown bread and is almost identical to the Ulster wheaten.

A traditional full Irish breakfast comprises bacon, sausage, eggs, potatoes, beans, soda bread or toast, tomatoes, mushrooms, and white or black pudding. For those wondering, black pudding coagulates the pig's blood into a sausage form. The white pudding is simply a pork sausage, usually flat.

Up North, whence my wife hails, it's called wheaten bread (with brown and white flour) or soda farls (with only white flour). All these breads are made using bread soda (aka Sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3) as a leavening agent.

Soda bread is a variety of quick bread made in many cuisines in which sodium bicarbonate (otherwise known as "baking soda", or in Ireland, "bread soda") is used as a leavening agent instead of yeast. The basic ingredients of soda bread are flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk.

The chemical magic between baking soda and an acidic substances was a discovery made by many scientists, but the unique combination of flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk eluded many of them but eventually it became the recipe of the daily bread in Ireland in the second half of the 19th century.

They used pearl ash, a natural form of soda created from the ashes of wood, to make their bread without yeast. However, this practice became known worldwide when the Irish discovered and replicated it.