- Hey, I'm John Kanell and
today on Preppy Kitchen we're making an easy,
delicious Irish soda bread. So let's get started. To make this recipe you'll
need all purpose flour, cold butter, an egg, some
sugar, baking soda, salt, cold butter milk, raisins
or currents are optional. First off, set that oven to
425, we want it nice and hot. You'll also wanna grab a cast iron skillet or a baking sheet, both will work. This gives you a nice crispy crust though. Into a large bowl, I'm adding four cups or 480 grams of all purpose flour. I'm using a scale, it is the best way to get delicious everything. So I highly recommend one. If you don't have a
scale, here's the deal. You're gonna wanna fluff
the flour in the container, sprinkle it into your cup, level it off, and that's how you get an
accurate cup full of flour. If you scoop it up, oh my gosh, you're adding a ton of extra flour. One and a half teaspoons of baking soda. This is such an interesting recipe because the chemical reaction to make it was actually discovered
by Native Americans. They used Pearl ash to
leaven some flat cakes they would make. In Ireland, it became popular because yeast wasn't very available. It still makes a delicious,
nutritious bread. Right now I'm adding one
teaspoon of kosher salt. If you're using a fine grain
salt, I would use half the salt because these are pretty
large salt granules, right? Little salt pebbles. I'm also adding four
tablespoons of granulated sugar. This will give it a
little bit of sweetness and also a little bit of softness as well. Okay, whisk this up. I'm setting this aside just for a moment because I want to grab my one egg. Plop that into a container. I got the shell out, don't worry. I'm also adding one and two
thirds cups of cold buttermilk. This is the acid that's gonna
react with the baking soda. So in you go. Whisk that up. Buttermilk is really
important in that recipe. It has is the acid that
reacts with the baking soda and makes everything nice and fluffy. But if you don't have it, you can cheat it using whole milk and vinegar. For this amount of whole milk, I would add like a tablespoon
and a half of a white vinegar. Just mix it in and set
aside for a few minutes and then add that with the egg. Back to our bowl. We need to add our butter in. It's in the fridge, it
needs to be nice and cold. So let's get it out. Nice and hard. Four tablespoons of cold butter. It's about 75 grams, and now
I'm just gonna whittle away at it and add that into my flour. This butter's giving us some
extra richness that's also gonna play with the texture
of our bread as well. Now we're gonna use our clean hands or a pastry cutter to
work the cold butter in. You want little pieces of butter throughout your Irish soda bread, not tiny, tiny little pieces all over, but like larger chunks because
when they go into the oven at 425, you're gonna have
steam pockets coming up. It's gonna help it rise as well as making it taste delicious. For those of you who haven't
had soda bread before, it's amazing. Slather it with butter and
enjoy it with a cup of coffee or tea, or just grab and
go for an anytime snack. There we go, that looks
nice all throughout. Create a well in the center. It now for the fun part, I'm gonna pour in this buttermilk mixture. Once again, I don't wanna waste any of it, and use a spatula to fold it in. We do not wanna over mix this at all. The key to having like a nice tender crumb in the inside is to have
little pieces of butter and mixing until it is just combined. Do not over mix. Doing that will activate the gluten and really cause the Irish
soda bread to shrink back down after it cools and be kind of dense. This is called a quick bread,
in case you didn't know. Banana bread, zucchini bread, soda bread, they're all similar. We're using baking soda
or sodium bicarbonate to activate the leavening process. It mixes with an acid that you've added in and delicious, amazing things happen. Quick breads were actually
very popular in America, even more so than yeasted
breads a long time ago. This is almost ready,
right now you can add in optional things like raisins or currants. Sprinkle those in and it
could be raisins, currents, candied fruit, nuts, you
could have orange zest. Almost anything will work in this. We're just gonna fold this
together to finish the mixing and distribute our raisins, in this case. You can let me know how you
like Irish soda bread at home. I know a lot of you have family recipes that are passed down and
that much more special. So I love hearing family's
individual take on a recipe. Lightly flour the surface of your counter. Just a little bit. We just need to form this into a loaf, so it looks nice and pretty. We're not gonna knead the dough. This gets formed into a
loaf, just bring it together, and you can add a little
bit of flour to the outside. It is a very wet dough. I have my loaf ready. Now it goes into my cast iron pan. You could also have this on a baking sheet with parchment paper or even
a cake pan will work too. Plop that right in there. Before it goes into the
oven, we need a cross on top. So just use a knife. I like run it in flour first,
because this is so wet. And adding this X on is gonna
help the dough kind of like split in a controlled fashion,
so it bakes more evenly. Our bread's going into the
oven, 25 to 30 minutes at 425 until it is puffed and golden. You'll see what it looks like
when it comes out of the oven. Out of the oven, it's
golden and smells amazing. Let it cool just a bit,
then it's time for a slice. I hope I was able to describe
soda bread and do it justice. It is so delicious. Crunchy on the outside, soft
and amazing on the inside. Kissed with just a
little bit of sweetness. I hope you get a chance
to make this recipe. And if you like this video, check out my quick bread playlist.
