Happy St. Patrick’s Day Irish Soda Bread

Here is a quick and easy recipe for a delicious Irish soda bread you can make anytime.

My top tips for making soda bread are not to over mix the dough and get it as quickly as possible into your hot oven to bake.

Ingredients:

530g white flour (I used half strong white bread flour and half plain flour from local @cotswold flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
30g unsalted butter, cubed
340g buttermilk
1 medium egg
A handful of oats to go on top

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees fan. Stir together the dry ingredients. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients until it looks like coarse meal. Mix the egg and buttermilk in a jug. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and stir in about 3/4 of the buttermilk and egg mixture and bring together into a soft dough. Add the additional liquid if the dough feels dry. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and shape into a flat, thick round. ‘Bless’ the bread by cutting a cross into the top, taking care not to cut all the way through the dough. Make a small incision with your knife in each of the quarters to ‘let the fairies out,’ sprinkle some oats over the top, and bake on a baking sheet for 15 minutes before turning the oven down to 180 degrees fan and baking for an additional 25 minutes. The bread is done when the cross is dry and the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool on a wire rack.

Variations: a handful of dried fruit, some seeds, or a hard cheese (such as feta or halloumi) mixed in makes a delicious variation.

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