Happy St. Patrick's Day: Irish Soda Bread

It would be wrong on many levels if I failed to produce the traditional Irish soda bread for St. Patrick's Day.  I took a recipe from here and added to it a bit.  I had to; it didn't include the caraway seeds or raisins.  Both are a MUST if you're making Irish soda bread.  Otherwise it's not the real deal ; )

As always, I'm pleased with the way my Irish soda bread came out.  It's so good and full of flavor.  Normally I'm not into the flavor of caraway seeds but it goes so well with this bread.  And while the bread is good on its own, it never hurts to spread a little butter on your slices.

YUM!

IRISH SODA BREAD

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups all-purpose flour

4 tablespoons white sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup margarine, softened

1 cup buttermilk

1 egg

1/4 cup butter, melted

1/4 cup buttermilk

1 tablespoon caraway seeds

3/4 cup raisins

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease a large baking sheet.

In a large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, caraway seeds, raisins, salt and margarine. Stir in 1 cup of buttermilk and egg. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead slightly. Form dough into a round and place on prepared baking sheet. In a small bowl, combine melted butter with 1/4 cup buttermilk; brush loaf with this mixture. Use a sharp knife to cut an 'X' into the top of the loaf.

Bake in preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean, about 30 to 50 minutes. You may continue to brush the loaf with the butter mixture while it bakes.

PERSONAL NOTES:

As I mentioned above I had to add the caraway seeds and raisins as the original recipe doesn't include them.  Which by the way, is unusual.  I've never had an Irish soda bread without those ingredients. 

Oh, and I chose to omit the butter mixture for the top of the loaf.  I thought it was fine without it.  So that's up to you.

Swope Bread. Sweet and hearty.

I really have to stop baking bread.  It's too damn good and I can't stop myself from eating (lots of) it.  I'm so drawn to it... check out the latest loaf I made: Swope Bread.  I've been tooling around online and I'm trying to figure out what is Swope Bread.  Any ideas?

All kidding aside, starting this week I am giving up bread.  Not forever, mind you, but just until I can have it without obsessing over it.  I can do it; I've done it before.  It's the getting there part that stinks :(  I have to keep in mind it's just healthier for me.

That said, this bread is wonderfully delicious and easy to make.  No waiting around for the yeast to kick in and rise the dough.  I estimate this bread takes about 10 minutes to prepare and another to bake.  Easy-peasy.
SWOPE BREAD

You can find the original recipe here from allrecipes.com - one of my favorite all-time food sites.  I've made so many things from this site.  YUM!

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons salt

4 teaspoons baking soda

4 cups buttermilk

DIRECTIONS:



Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans.

In a large bowl, stir together all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, sugar and salt. In a separate bowl, dissolve baking soda in buttermilk. Stir buttermilk into flour mixture. Beat well. Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake in preheated oven for one hour.

PERSONAL NOTES:
This recipe makes two loaves so I just halved it to make the one.  After all, it's bad enough I'm eating most of it on my own anyway... Oy.

Oh, I mixed half spelt flour and half all-purpose flour.  Spelt flour works wonderfully in breads.

Spelt Bread. Super easy and delicious.

In an effort to cut down on all the refined foods I've been enjoying lately, I decided to give spelt a shot to see what it was like.  In a nutshell: it's wonderful.  I was expecting some dense and too-nutty-flavored bread.  But it really isn't like that.  It bakes up light like whole wheat bread would and I even added ground flax seeds to it and it still wasn't overpowering.  It's just... really, really good!

You can find the original recipe here, from allrecipes.com

And as it turns out, spelt is better for you (as I'd been hoping).  Check out the article here to see some benefits of using spelt flour over whole durum wheat flour.

SPELT BREAD

INGREDIENTS:

8 cups spelt flour

1/2 cup sesame seeds

1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses

2 teaspoons baking soda

4 1/4 cups milk

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans.

In a large bowl, mix together the spelt flour, sesame seeds, salt, molasses, baking soda and milk until well blended. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans.

Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden. Placing a tin of the same size over the top of the loaf while baking gives it a lovely crust.

PERSONAL NOTES:

I didn't have sesame seeds so I used ground flax seeds.  Big YUM!  The bread came out great - it's just like regular, whole wheat bread.  Another big plus: it's so easy to make.  So easy.

Honey Beer Bread.

So what do you do when you have food items you want to get rid of?  You look for recipes using those same items!  And that is how this next recipe came about.  It's a simple, easy to make bread.  It uses no yeast so you don't have to wait for it to rise.  You can tell by the pictures that even without the yeast, it had no problems rising pretty high! 

The taste?  In a word: YUMMY!  I know this sounds silly, but you can really taste the beer and the honey together.  It's such a nice flavor combination.  Actually, I thought it was a rather interesting taste; biting into a piece of fresh bread and encountering the unmistakeable beer flavor, softened slightly by the honey.  So good.

And of course, the original recipe can be found here.  Well done!

HONEY BEER BREAD

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 Tbsp. sugar

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. honey or agave nectar

1 bottle (12 ounces) beer

4 Tbsp. (half stick) butter, melted (**You can double this if you’d like**)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9″ x 5″ x 3″ inch loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Using a wooden spoon, stir the beer and honey into the dry ingredients until just mixed. (I recommend popping your honey in the microwave for a few seconds beforehand to make it easier to stir in!)

Pour half the melted butter into the loaf pan. Then spoon the batter into the pan, and pour the rest of the butter on top of the batter. (Use a pastry brush to spread it around if you’d like.)

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until top is golden brown and a toothpick/knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Serve immediately.


PERSONAL NOTES:

I ended up using only 2 tablespoons of melted butter which I put into the dough directly.  You can brush the top of the dough with the butter as the directions suggest, but I didn't see any difference from when I used the butter on top from when I didn't (yes, I made the bread twice :)

As I said, it's super easy to make and just delicious.  Especially warm!

Game Day Pretzels

I used to have a pretzel recipe that my mom gave me but of course I can't locate it.  She used to make these killer pretzels with her food processor.  Since I thought pretzels would be a good thing to snack on for Sunday's Superbowl, I once again trolled online to find a suitable recipe.  And I found it.  Unfortunately, they didn't come out so pretty, but I'm just really out of practice.  It's gotta be about 12 years since I made them last.  Regardless of how they look, they are super tasty!

Recipe is once again courtesy of allrecipes.com and can be found here. 

GAME DAY PRETZELS

(I made a couple of them as pretzel twists.  YUMMY!)

INGREDIENTS:

4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 teaspoon white sugar

1 1/4 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

5 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup white sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1/2 cup baking soda

4 cups hot water

1/4 cup kosher salt, for topping

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt. Make a well in the center; add the oil and yeast mixture. Mix and form into a dough. If the mixture is dry, add one or two tablespoons of water. Knead the dough until smooth, about 7 to 8 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). In a large bowl, dissolve baking soda in hot water.
4. When risen, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rope and twist into a pretzel shape. Once all of the dough is all shaped, dip each pretzel into the baking soda solution and place on a greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with kosher salt.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 8 minutes, until browned.

 (These guys were shaped properly, but I didn't anticipate they'd rise so much while baking.  D'oh! But they still taste wonderful!!!)

PERSONAL NOTES:

One BIG note I have to mention is to add LESS flour!  Yes, the directions say to make a well with the dry ingredients and add the yeast/oil to it.  However... you will probably want to withhold about ONE CUP of flour and then slowly add it in as you're mixing.  When I did it, I ended up having to add several tablespoons of water which I think is just more complicated.  Withhold some flour and move forward from there.

Right as they came out of the oven I brushed melted butter on them.  Then I very lightly sprinkled the kosher salt to taste.  These are ridiculoulsy easy to make!

Just one more thing to remember: when rolling out each piece into the pretzel shape, be sure to allow for it to rise!  You may want to roll out at least 18" pieces.