Traditional Irish Soda Bread Recipe Passed Down Through Generations

Well bakers, 10 years ago today I shared my mom's recipe for traditional Irish soda bread with you. It's nothing fancy, it's just a bread that all Irish people go up with. After working as a pastry chef for over 20 years around the world, this is the kind of bread I always come back to. And today I'm very excited to make it with my six-year-old son. Irish soda bread is just a few ingredients, no yeast, just flour, buttermilk, baking soda and salt. That's it. Alright, let's bring in the star of the show. Are you ready to make granny soda bread? Yes. Okay, what do we start out with? Nice big bowl. Here we have whole wheat flour. Look at that, smell that. Smells a little

bit nutty. Naughty. At home my mom uses, flour in. At home my mom uses coarse whole wheat flour because that's very common to find in Ireland. In America I can really only find a fine flour, whole wheat flour, so that's what I use. So here we have regular flour, then let's put that in. Lovely. And can I say a note about the regular flour before you move on? If you follow a lot of my recipes that use whole wheat, I never use 100% whole wheat. It can end up being a very heavy bread, so what I always do is cut it with at least half white flour, half whole wheat flour. You can get away with three quarters whole wheat and a little bit of white, but white is what lightens it, and you end up with a lighter bread. If

you ever have brown soda bread that's very heavy, it can be because of a lot of whole wheat flour, and it's just not my prefers bread. Mine either. Yeah look at that. Get that stir there Georgie. Is that dry? Oh yeah dry. I mean dry, dry, wet, dry, wet, dry. Good job. We need wet, wet. What do we do first? We add in all our dry ingredients. Dry. So what's this in here in your hands? Salt. Lovely. Throw it in there. Thanks for showing, Julie. Baking soda. Perfect. How did you know that was baking soda? I just guessed.

Oh you're so smart. So here's the thing about Irish soda bread. The reason that it is made in minutes all around the country of Ireland daily is because it's a quick bread. It is not yeasted. It doesn't need any time to rise. It is really fast. As you can see, Georgie mixing it up here. The baking soda is its raising agent. We don't use any baking powder. We use soda. Later on we're going to add in buttermilk and the combination of those two are going to help your bread rise. Right now we're going to add in this butter.

Could you add in that butter? And rain butter. Go away. I don't think it's gonna rain. I'll punch you. There you go. Go out. Mister, mister. Mister butter. Now can I show you something that Granny told me when I was very young? One of the first things I remember making with my mom is apple crumble topping which is apple crumble rice. Is half the amount of butter to flour and a little bit of sugar. It's a really easy recipe to remember. So sweetheart we want to go light with these and rub it in. So ever since I was around six years old. I'm six. You are six. Same method. Rubbing in butter into flour. Just take a few minutes. A few lumps of

butter. How many minutes? Just like oh maybe not even minutes. You know what thanks for actually calling me out on that. Second? Two seconds. Thanks Georgie for keeping me honest. 17 and a half. Yeah. Yeah look at that. Georgie bring it to me. Look at that. Lovely. That is lovely. So make sure you wash your hands before you make these. Little bit messy. Little bit messy. So here's what we're gonna do sweetheart. Let's bring in our wet ingredients. Can you help me out here? I don't want this in. Add the egg into that water milk. Buy egg. Oopsie. By the way. Squants, squants.

Squants totally fine. I do what I'm gonna do. We're gonna improvise. You see that the fork here? Yeah. I'm gonna whisk it in there just a little bit like that. If you accidentally put the egg into the mixture, the dry mixture, just mix it up. Yeah and you can add in the butter milk and then we'll get everything in there altogether. I'll add in butter milk and butter milk fall. I can see, I can hear him saying butter like the way I say butter. Butter milk waterfalls. So butter milk in Ireland can be washed in every store because we use it a lot for scone making and for Irish soda bread and in Ireland when you go to petrol stations you can get freshly made brown bread, sausage rolls which are my favorite. Ice cream. Soft serve

ice cream in petrol stations. Yeah I got that. You did a few times you got that. It's one of my favorite things and then you can also do the latte at the same time. So all of those things for all those reasons we love petrol stations and by petrol station what do we mean George? Can you translate that? Gas station. Petrol. Petrol is gas by the way. Thank you. So let's get we're gonna hold off on those for a sec. We are yeah hold off on those for a sec. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do a messy job. You ready for this? Okay. In with our hand. Now when I went to Bally Maloo I remember one day Doreena went around the kitchen concerned that we didn't know the correct way to make soda

bread and we were just about to graduate from our course and so the one thing we want to do is with a nice big hand. Do it. Like an open hand. This is what we're gonna do sweetheart. Mix our hand around the bowl with a big hand. Make your hand big like a claw. I can't wait to eat this bread later. We do. I'm gonna bring the dough together with my big open hand. You don't want to knead this. You don't want to squish it with your fingers. Oopsie. That's okay. No you're doing a great job. You want to do it really lightly because you just want to bring it together.

Just flip it over. Yeah so why not. You've come this far. There we go. How about we turn it out into the counter. Let me try that. Guys this is a very important that you help you use a grown up. You need a grown up to help you with this. And you might get a little bit flowery. Like mine. That's okay. If you're not getting messy, you're not having fun. Is that right? Yes. Yeah. Now here's what I'm going to do with this bread. You don't want to knead it too much. You just want to bring it together on the countertop. So sometimes it's easier just to turn it out. Yeah how about you know what you can help with sweetheart?

Oh there you go. Can I wash my hands? You sure can. So make sure you wash your hands and then do the next step. Yeah there you go. Wash your hands there. Take your time. So while George is washing his hands, I'm going to bring this dough together on the counter. Incorporate any of those dry ingredients. And by quick I really mean quick. Lovely. Like as fast as you can. Oh look at this. Fantastic. Look what you did. Here's what we're going to do. Let's bring it over here. This looks tiny. Can you see the bottom? Let's show them the bottom. So look at that bottom. It's not flat.

It's a really good bottom. I'm going to think about the top. Top? Yes. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to get you. Let's don't get my hands dirty. I'm not going to get your hands dirty again. Here I have my baking tray. I have my bowl. It is a little bit rustic. Try and get it to the best shape as you can. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to flatten it out. Oh I want to say it's eight inches George. Let me just. Okay I can rule it. Wait is it this? Which side is it? So you want the big numbers. Turn it around there.

Let's do. Yeah I'm going to sew it. It's seven inches. So I'm going to push it a little bit flatter. A mistake that people make with soda bread is making it too flat and then they end up with a flat loaf. So do keep it nice and thick. It's almost where the thickness of your dough wants to be around an inch. Almost eight. So it's almost eight. It's around seven so I'm going to stop here because my dough is around an inch thick. Now watch this George. This is the special part that all Irish mummies know. We're going to bless the bread. So this is very important in Irish soda bread. You have to bless the bread. In Annamonaghir. Agassam Vicky. Agassam Shriv. Naeh. Amen.

Amen. Father, Son, the Holy Ghost. So that's the saying that you do. So here's an important part that you're going to want to do George. We need to take the knife, prick each corner of the knife. Okay. I'm going to help you. And do you know what this is doing? Hey mama, can we go like a. Yeah. Do you know what this is doing? So guys, I'm a really great chef. That's why I'm the only kid who's doing this. So what we're doing here is releasing the fairies. If you don't release the fairies, guess what they do? What? They curse your bread and you end up with bad Irish soda bread. That would be awful.

You know, I have fairies so. I know you have fairies. They mike us it. I shared your fairies on social media. What? Yeah. Everybody thought they were so cute. Now, here we go. Lest bread, release the fairies. This is the trick that my mom used to do and I still do it. I know she still does it to this day. So what my mom used to do was the jug that you mixed in the egg and the buttermilk. She would use her fingers and glaze the bread with that. She wouldn't beat a new egg. This was sufficient to glaze the bread and still make it lovely golden brown. When you're blessing the bread, make sure with your big knife,

go all the way down to the bottom and make a deep indentation because if you don't, you won't get that lovely pop open that Irish soda bread has. That like iconic look. I still use this trick. I think it's fantastic. I mean, why crack a whole egg to glaze one loaf of bread? And it really does make it lovely golden brown. Now I just need somebody back here to sprinkle on the oats. Sorry, I might have drinks and a mini-lip cracker. There, lovely. Fantastic. Thank you, sweetheart. That's how simple and fast it is to make this dough, even with a helper. So the one thing about Irish soda bread is that once the dough mixes together and the

buttermilk and the baking soda come into contact, it starts to actually activate. So what you want to do is get it into your really nice hot oven straight away because you want to get that lovely oven spring. Brown bread needs a nice hot oven. So bake it at 425 degrees Fahrenheit, 215 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. Then remember to turn down the temperature of your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, 200 degrees Celsius and bake it for another full 30 minutes. After that time, your bread should be a lovely golden brown. As you can see, it is well risen and we have that lovely indentation in the middle, the iconic look of an Irish soda bread. To make extra sure it's done, you can always tap the bottom and if it sounds

hollow, it is good. The same rule of thumb here that applies to all bread, which is let it cool completely before cutting into it. In Ireland, soda bread is served many different ways. You can put some butter and jam on it, or you can have it with some butter on the side of soup or even as an open-faced sandwich. In Ireland, our food might be simple but not to be mistaken with something that is plain. This bread is big and bold and really reflects how the Irish people cook every day. I really hope you enjoyed this video of my son and I making traditional Irish soda bread. It was a real treat for me. Thank you so much for watching and if you want to see more traditional Irish baking videos or if you want to see more George, then get comfy

because I've got lots more of those for you to check out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you back here again really soon.