27 October 2018
Recipe from Bread Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen, 2016, p. 48; also available on-line
I have long been curious about Irish soda bread. So as I worked my way through Bread Illustrated I was happy to try its recipe for Brown Soda Bread, which I presume is similar. I use bread primarily for sandwiches for lunch. Would this be a good sandwich bread?
This is a quick bread, using baking soda and baking powder as leaveners rather than yeast. I started by toasting wheat germ in a skillet on the stove top. This was whisked together with the other dry ingredients: all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. The liquid ingredients—buttermilk and melted butter—were combined in a measuring cup and added to the dry ingredients and stirred with a spatula until the dough can together. The dough was briefly kneaded, shaped into a round, and baked on a baking sheet. Total time from start to taking the bread from the oven was 1 hour 15 minutes, it took 30 minutes to get the dough into the oven.
The appeal of this recipe is speed. With only 30 minutes of work you can have a homemade loaf in the oven baking and ready to eat a few hours later. The bread tastes good and has a nice crust, crispy though not chewy. The texture of the crumb is not the same as that of a yeast bread, it is coarser and not as chewy. It makes a reasonable sandwich bread. I will probably not make this often as I prefer the texture of yeast bread, but it is good to have in mind should a loaf be needed on short notice.
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