Passport Kitchen Irish Soda Bread - Passport Kitchen Irish Soda Bread
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EmailJune 6, 2022
Join Gladwin County 4-H as we teach you how to make Irish Soda Bread
Video Transcript
(Intro music) Hi everyone. I am so excited that you're joining us for passport kitchen today. You are started off on your very first adventure. Today we will be making Irish soda bread. But before we get started, you need to do a couple things. First things first, you're going to want to wash your work surface. As you can see, my work surface is very clean. That's because we're going to be kneading dough and when you knead dough, it's gonna pick up anything left on your work surface and you don't want that to happen. So make sure you get a nice wet rag, you wash everything down. You make sure it's very clean. Next, you're gonna want to pull up your hair. And you're gonna want to wash your hands. So, once you get those things done, then you're gonna need to gather your ingredients and your utensils. You're going to want a big mixing bowl. You're going to want some measuring utensils, a whisk, flour, baking soda, salt, milk, and vinegar. Unless you're using buttermilk. True buttermilk is all you will need. You will not need the milk or the vinegar, but I will be showing you guys how to make a buttermilk substitute. So get everything together, get everything set and come back here and we'll start on Irish soda bread. Hi everyone. I'm so glad that you're back. Alright, I hope you have everything set. Now the first step to making Irish soda bread is making a butter- milk substitute. If you're using traditional buttermilk, you can skip this step. But if you're not, you need to make the butter milk substitute. What you're going to need is milk and vinegar or lemon juice. Now, in your box, I sent you guys lemon juice. But if you have white vinegar at home and would prefer to use it, you are more than welcome to. Now what you'll need first is two cups of any type of milk. It doesn't matter what type of milk you want to use. So if you're someone who prefers almond milk or oat milk, you can utilize that. The only thing you don't want to do is use something that has a strong flavor in it. So some almond milks tastes like vanilla and so on. That will make your bread taste like vanilla and it's not going to be very good. Now, I have my two cups of milk measured here. I'm using 2%. If you want the closeness to true buttermilk, whole milk is the most preferred. Now, I put the two tablespoons of vinegar in my milk. What I'm going to do is I'm going to gently whisk it and then I'm going to let it sit aside to curdle. Once you've whisked your milk, all you wanna do is let it sit aside so it can curdle and it should be ready to go. Now that we've made our buttermilk substitute, the next thing we want to do is combine our dry ingredients. In my bowl here, I have four cups of all-purpose white flour, one teaspoon of salt, and one teaspoon of baking soda. And baking soda is actually how Irish soda bread gets its name because it uses baking soda to help it rise. What's you're going to want to do is mix all of these ingredients together. I'm using my whisk just to incorporate that salt and baking soda all the way through all of the flour. Once you've done that, you can set your whisk aside. So we're going to add a cup and a half of our buttermilk substitute. Now, you want to set aside a little bit of extra milk because this bread mixture is so dry when you're mixing it. If you feel like you need to add a little more, you can add a little more, you don't have to. But I tend to keep the extra on the side just in case. So you're going to want to take your measurement. And what you'll notice is there's all these little curds fixed up at the top and that's what you want to see. Then you're going to take and you're gonna measure out 1.5 cups right into it. As you can see, it's very chunky. Okay, going to set the rest aside just in case I need it. Now, using my whisk, I'm going to start incorporating that milk right into the dough. Now once I've got this all incorporated, we'll come back and I'll show you what you need to do next. All right my travelers, as you can see, our dough is now on our work surface. You do have to flour your work surface before you turn it out. It is ready for kneading. I'm going to set this bowl over here. And as you can see, it's very rough in texture and it is very sticky. That's why you need to add a little bit of flour just to keep it from sticking to your work surface. Now you're going to want to knead it until it's a smooth ball. Once you have it to that point, we'll move on to the next step. So I'll see you once mine is completed. Alright, everyone, so as you can see, I have my Irish soda bread dough. Kind of in a round puck shape. It's about, I want to say six to seven inches across in diameter. And it's very, very smooth at this point, there's a few little rough edges, but that's what you're looking for. Took me about five to ten minutes of kneading to get it to this consistency. I have slightly flattened it out just to fill up my pan a little more. Now you're going to want a round pan or a baking sheet. I'm using a round springform pan, this is pre-greased. You always want to make sure you grease it so your bread doesn't stick. And I've started preheating my oven to 425. Now it's going to take about 35 minutes or so for this bread to cook all the way through. And there's an important step that you're going to need an adult in your household to help you with. And that is you're going to want to cut a big X right across the top. You don't want to go too deep, but you don't want to go to too shallow. So about a quarter of an inch all the way in. And that's going to cut this really nice cross on the top, which will help give the bread space to rise. And like I said, you want an adult to help you with this step. So now I have my X in, going to pick our dough. We're going to put it right in our pan. And we're gonna put it in the oven for 35 minutes. All right, while that's baking, you have about 35 minutes to get your kitchen cleaned back up, shouldn't take you that long. I'm sure whoever is in your household that the adult would appreciate it. But while you're cleaning up, I'm going to tell you a little bit about how Irish soda bread really got its foothold in Ireland. Quick bread was created by indigenous people, those people who were on the Americas far before us. But because of the potato famine, soda bread really picked up in popularity amongst the Irish poor who were suffering during the famine. This is a bread that's going to be very dense and it's going to be very heavy. So you would eat this traditionally in Ireland with soups or stews. And like I said before, this utilised traditionally soured milk. And the reason it utilized soured milk was because, well that was what a lot of Irish people had. You couldn't always just go to the grocery store and pick up a gallon of milk and make bread. So what they had was, they had creameries and you would go to the creamery and you would get your fresh milk. Well your fresh milk would be drank by your children and yourself. And you wouldn't have any leftover to let sour for bread. But many creameries didn't sell all their product. So the milk would spoil and they didn't want the product to go to waste so they would sell it at a discount and people will use that to create soda bread. Now, like I said, soda bread was a famine bread. It became very popular for Irish people during the famine because they were given rations of flowering grains. And this was a way to make those grains into something more a meal or more than like a porridge. And that's how it got its popularity. Now one of the things that's really notable about Irish soda bread versus other bread is that it doesn't contain sugar or yeast. And that's because Irish people grew soft wheat and it wasn't really good quality and it couldn't take yeast very well, which is fine. That's why you utilize baking soda to help it rise versus yeast and sugar during the 1800s was considered a delicacy to the rich only. So if you were somebody living in the very, very back moores of Ireland, you weren't gonna get sugar. Sugar was not going to be something on your table. It's not like today where you and me go to the grocery store and sugar's $5 a pound and you just pick it up. And today there are lots of Irish soda bread recipes that do call for butter, sugar, eggs, and different things. But what we made was kind of the most traditional basic form of it. Irish soda bread is actually sold almost all year round in Ireland, but it's most common in the United States during and around the holiday of St. Patrick's Day. And you will find that it has fruit in it. That is very common for Irish soda bread to have currants or dried raisins because it's very popular in Ireland to have dried fruit in your soda bread. It's actually seen as kind of a treat. So that's all I have on Irish soda bread. And I'm gonna let our's continue to bake. I'll see you back here in a bit. So I'll see you once our bread is ready and I'll show you what it looks like. All right, everyone, and in front of me is my completed soda bread. Now, if you're looking at it, and you feel it didn't rise a lot or it doesn't look right. That's actually because soda bread doesn't have a lot of rise to it. What you're looking for is these big indents in the crust. So you can see where that cut that you made, the bread started to separate. Now my soda bread took about 35 minutes to bake all the way through. I gave it about 15 minutes on the outside of the oven to let it rest and to cool down just a little bit to make it a little easier for handling. So we're going to cut into it and I'm going to show you what it looks like on the inside. So when you come back, you can see that. Alright guys. So now you can see I have our Irish soda bread cut in half here and you can see that it's extremely dense and that's what you're looking for, is that density. This bread is considered a dense bread. It's a quick rise bread. So you're not going to see the aeration that you see in breads you would get at the grocery store or in yeast breads which have all the like the little air pockets and kinda feel spongy. This feels very dense. Now traditionally this is cut like a cake, so you're going to cut it into wedges. So it's, for a loaf about this size would feed about eight people. And it's really good with soups and stews. I prefer mine with butter and honey when I need a slice of this bread. But you can serve it really with anything. The only thing I'm going to recommend you don't use soda bread for is a sandwich. It's going to be a very heavy bread. It is though, is very crumbly and will fall apart. It just doesn't make a good sandwich bread, but any other way, it's fantastic to serve it as alongside, kind of like a biscuit. Think of it that way. Now for storage, what I'm going to recommend is that you guys, after it's cooled completely and I mean cooled completely, you're going to want to take it and put it in a Ziploc bag and try to get as much air out of the Ziploc bag as possible to keep this bread as fresh as possible. This bread is only good for about five days. And then after the fifth day, it really turns almost to like a stone. It's so hard and it's really dry. It's just the nature of soda bread at that point. But the best time to eat soda brand is almost directly out of the oven after you've allowed it to cool to a palatable temperature. But when it's still nice and warm on the inside, it is phenomenal. And it will take on the flavor of whatever you put on it because soda bread doesn't really have a flavor. It's going to take on the flavor of whatever you're putting on that bread. So if you're dipping it into a soup or stew, it's going to taste like the soup or stew. If you're putting butter and honey on it, like I like it, it's gonna taste very sweet and buttery. But again, it's all up to you. I hope everyone had fun. It's been wonderful to share Irish soda bread with you. And a little bit about Irish culture. I can't wait to see what next week brings us. It's going to be a surprise. Look forward to your boxes and I will see you all next week. [Silence} (Outro music)
