With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I can’t help but start thinking about Irish food, and one of the first things that comes to mind is Irish Soda Bread. Irish Soda Bread is one of the first things I ever cooked way back as a teenage – actually I might have even been a bit younger. There are lots of Irish Soda Bread recipes out there – some with no add-ins, some with currants, raisins or other fruit, some with caraway seeds, and some with a combination. I chose to include currants and caraway seeds for no particular reason, it just sounded good, and I was right. It was very good.
The recipe I used was kind of a combination of two recipes I found on Food Network. The recipe is most like Marilyn O’Reilly’s Irish Soda Bread. I did replace the raisins with currants and used cake flour to get a better rise. The method however, is similar to the method Ina Garten uses in her Irish Soda Bread. I did not use the method entirely, but did want to try incorporating the butter into the flour with a mixer, and it worked great!
Irish Soda Bread
Ingredients
3 cups cake flour, plus more for the currants and for flouring your surface
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces
1 cup dried currants
1 Tbsp. caraway seeds
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Line a baking sheet with parchment.
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer. Using the paddle attachment, mix until butter seems to disappear into the flour.
Dust the currants lightly with flour and stir currants and caraway seeds into the flour mixture.
Beat the egg into the buttermilk. Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and stir with a spoon just until everything is moistened.
Pour dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle dough with a little flour. Fold dough over itself until it sticks together adding flour as needed. You are not really needing the dough and should stop folding and adding flour when it stops sticking to your hands.
Shape into a round loaf and put on prepared pan.
Bake for 15 minutes. Then, reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for approximately 20 minutes more or until bread is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped.
