Irish Soda Bread- Simple Homemade Healthy Bread Recipe | You've Got Meal!

I just love the smell of freshly baked bread in our house. It makes a house feel a lot more well… homey. And fluffy. And pretty much like you never want to leave – just think of the gingerbread house in the Hansel and Gretel story. No wonder those two went right in, must have smelled amazing.  

   

But I’m not here to tell you of classic story or to present you our flat’s dramatic transformation into a gingerbread house. Instead, I’m going to do something better and tell you about our awesome Irish soda bread recipe. This is one of the easiest ways to try and level up your baking skill.

I mean, we’re only talking about 

• 500 grams of flour (half wheat, half rye), 
• 1tbs. of baking powder, 
• 1 tsp. of salt, 
• 400 grams of buttermilk, 
• 75 grams of rye flakes, 
• 50 grams of flax seeds and 
• the same amount of pumpkin seeds.

A couple of things here: the classic Irish soda bread makes use of the chemical reaction between the baking powder and the butter milk to kick things up. The kind of flour you add, seeds, raisins or butter – these things are pretty much optional, go nuts over it. 

But, if you browse some other recipes on this blog (a wise course of action that would be), you’ll see that we like to keep some dishes close to the original, and this one deserves to be like that. The thing we went for was a super healthy, full of fibers, rich in taste bread, that could rock next to some fresh cream or garlic paste. 

Be careful here, the bread will be in its top shape for a max of 24 hours, make sure you enjoy it in that period of time. The more you wait, the harder it will get and the more intense the flavor of baking powder will get.

The making of the bread itself is as easy as finding a bar in Dublin (see what I did there?). Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, the rye flakes and the seeds. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the buttermilk.

Use your well floured hands to mix everything together, until you make a rather gooey dough. As a comparison to pasta dough, for example, the Irish bread dough is runnier. You can’t work the dough for very long, just create a ball shape, flour it and, with a knife, make an incision on top of the bread, so the center will cook at the same pace as the sides . 

We just put that on top of some aluminum foils in order to cook it, but feel free to use your fancy baking equipment. Pop the bread in the preheated oven at 170 C and cook until you see the bread getting a dark brown color in the middle (around 40  minutes). 

In order to make sure, stick a clean, dry skewer in the center of the loaf. If it comes back out clean, the bread is done. Now, enjoy the freshly-baked-bread smell and the view, because it is a wonderful, rustic looking bread that you made. Just look at the photos!

Enjoy,