Breakfast · By Sharon
Irish Wholemeal Soda Bread
Our spring 2024 trip to Ireland was delightful in many ways, and not surprisingly, a number of those highlights involved food. We looked forward every breakfast to our toasted Irish soda bread. When Maggie, the owner of our BnB in the Connemara district, visited us with her homemade soda bread, we asked for the recipe. We promptly went out and bought two small bags of the Irish wholemeal flour to take home — so flavorful, grown on that impossibly green, lush island! However, airport security was suspicious about the flour in our bags. In my best pleading voice I asked them not to take my bread flour away, and after inspecting it, they let it through with a grin. This bread is heavy, textural, and dark. It's wonderful with anything. We had it with seafood chowder and Irish stew (made with Guinness Stout) several times, and have vowed to recreate these Irish classics to have with this bread. As toast at breakfast, it is so good — it gets crispier than regular bread when toasted, and its rich, dark flavors beg for a citrusy marmalade.
Ingredients
- 1⅔ cups unbleached white flour
- 1¾ cups wholemeal/wholegrain flour
- ½ cup seeds (sunflower and pumpkin)
- 1 tbsp ground flax-seed
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 2 cups buttermilk
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 2 tbsp molasses
- Some cornmeal for coating the loaf pan
Method
- 1
As a soda bread, there is no time taken for yeast leavening — the soda interacts with the buttermilk to create leavening.
- 2
Preheat oven to 375°F (convection) or 400°F (conventional). Butter a loaf pan and sprinkle cornmeal evenly up the sides and along the bottom.
- 3
Mix dry stuff together — make a well in the middle.
- 4
Mix wet stuff together and pour it into the dry stuff — mix well — it will be wet!
- 5
Pour/scrape mixture into the butter/cornmeal-crusted loaf pan and make the top flat with a knife. Sprinkle top with oatmeal or seeds and push them down a bit to embed.
- 6
Bake at 375°F (convection) for 10 minutes. Then lower temp to 350°F and bake for 15 minutes more. Cover with foil at this point (to prevent top from darkening too much, and encourage the wet inside to cook fully). Put back in oven and bake for about 10 more minutes.
- 7
Loaf is done when a toothpick comes out clean, and the loaf sounds a bit hollow when tapped.
A note from Sharon
The roughly 35 minutes of baking time is for 1 loaf. I have tended to do 2 smaller loaves with this recipe, and then the cooking time would be 22–25 minutes in total (same process of starting at 375°F and lowering to 350°F after 10 minutes).
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