In Praise of Soda Bread
This month Sláinte celebrates Irish soda bread. Real soda bread, the traditional type our Irish ancestors have baked and eaten for well over 100 years. It is tender and dense with a slight sour tang and a hard crust. A nutritious staple that is real “Staff of Life” stuff.
As befitting a traditional product of a poor country, it was made with only the most basic of ingredients: flour to form a dough, bread soda to leaven the dough, soured milk to moisten and activate the soda, and salt for seasoning. It is a traditional food, worth preserving and passing on to our grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Sláinte was reminded of this when she was one of the judges in Seattle’s annual soda bread contest sponsored by the Irish Heritage Club. There were over 35 loaves entered this year in three categories: traditional white, traditional brown and glorified (anything goes). Together with Don Trembley, T.S. McHugh’s co-owner and head chef, Sláinte tasted over a dozen traditional white soda breads.
The three winners were obvious to us both. Their loaves were made in the traditional shape (round) using fresh traditional ingredients (no sugar or eggs and not a caraway seed in sight), and the dough was gently handled and not overworked. It has been a while since Sláinte had made soda bread and she had forgotten how good such simple bread could be when properly made.
Not that Sláinte has anything against soda bread of the non-traditional sort. With a recipe so basic it is only natural that cooks have added their own special touches down through the years to suit their own family’s tastes. That is why you will find soda bread made with such a variety of ingredients.
For example, we Yanks like things sweet. So Irish bakeries that cater to tourists often add sugar to their soda bread. Even in Irish homes it has become commonplace to add baking powder for a lighter loaf. Baking powder is a product our ancestors probably would have used had it been available back then. Currants are a favorite addition. Sláinte's mother from County Louth added currants and mashed potatoes to her soda bread. It wasn’t traditional but it sure was good.
Other additions are more radical. Sláinte has found recipes that called for so much butter, sugar and eggs that the result had to be more cake than bread. She has even found recipes for “traditional” Irish soda bread that called for lemon rind, orange zest, caraway seeds, honey, green food coloring and a shiny egg glaze on top.
While the product of such recipes might be “Irish” by virtue of who concocted the recipe, and “soda bread” because it contained soda, she refuses to call them “traditional” soda breads. That designation should be reserved solely for simple bread of our history.
Yes Sláinte knows your sainted aunt Mary, who put everything but the kitchen sink into her soda bread, was from the old country, but that still does not make her soda bread traditional. Her ancestors did not have sinks. It is best to call her recipe Auntie Mary’s Irish soda bread.
After Sláinte’s bread machine cookbook was published, a reader asked why she hadn’t included a recipe for Irish soda bread. Luckily this conversation took place via e-mail because Sláinte was speechless.
It was so much easier than making it by hand the old-fashioned way the reader continued enthusiastically. They even included a recipe that was identified as “Traditional Irish Soda Bread” so I could include it in the next book. What an innovation and time saver, Sláinte thought!
The bread machine reduced the whole 60 minutes it takes to make and bake soda bread to a paltry four hours. It wasn’t Irish. It wasn’t even soda bread. When asked what made this soda-less non-Irish bread traditional Irish soda bread, the reader replied, why the caraway seeds of course! To her, caraway seeds were to baked goods what leprechauns are to souvenirs. Sprinkling a few on any product automatically made it Irish.
Next month Sláinte will include a recipe for traditional soda bread and discuss how to make a perfect loaf. If you would like to share your tips on soda bread baking, send them to: Maureen@keanenutrition.com. Sláinte!
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