Irish Soda Bread
How is it March already?!?!?
I feel like it was just the holidays. Now it’s already Spring Break!
Though I am not sad that it is March because that means St. Patrick’s Day is almost here. I’m probably not excited in the way that you think – we’re a dry household, and the thought of celebrating this holiday in the more “conventional” way isn’t appealing to us.
I love St. Patrick’s Day because of the Irish Soda Bread.
The Chicago grocery store chain Jewel used to make Irish soda bread all through March, and they always underbaked it. Soda bread is dense and chewy anyway, but also being slightly underbaked made it just a little doughy, and for some reason it totally worked, and I LOVED it.
There are not a whole lot of Jewel stores left in Illinois, and I live 2,000 miles away in Arizona now, and I can no longer eat gluten, so instead of dreaming of soda bread days past, I set out to make my own gluten free version this year!
Making soda bread (and yes, this is an Americanized version, not particularly traditional) gluten-free is a little more difficult, as soda bread is gets its dense, chewy texture from the gluten in traditional wheat flour. The dense is easy to replicate (gluten free bakers understand this all too well), but the chew is difficult to replicate.
Here, I used a blend of gluten free flours from Arrowhead Mills: 1 cup of the All-Purpose Flour and 1c of their Heritage blend. The Heritage blend contains sorghum flour, and with the sweet rice flour in the all-purpose, the combination gives the loaf a good chew that approximates the original. Doubling the baking soda helps the loaf to not get too dense.
Because gluten free flour gets very dry, moisture levels need to be increased as well. Traditional soda bread calls for buttermilk to activate the baking soda, but I used brown sugar and apple cider vinegar instead, and the dough rose very well.
If you don’t have access to non-dairy Greek yogurt (Kite Hill works great in this recipe), you can add 1/2c of non-dairy milk and 1-3T tapioca starch. I use it to approximate the tang you get from traditional buttermilk. In terms of liquid, I just used regular unsweetened almond milk, and it worked just fine!
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!
Irish Soda Bread
MAKES: 1 loaf
4c flour (2c all-purpose and 2c heritage) or 3c all-purpose, 1/2c buckwheat flour, and 1/2c sorghum flour
3T brown sugar
1t salt
2t baking soda
4T Earth Balance butter sticks, cold, and cubed
1c raisins
1 egg
1 container non-dairy Greek yogurt
1 1/4c unsweetened non-dairy milk
1T ACV
In a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, or in a bowl, add flour and baking soda. Cube butter, and either with hands or pastry cutter, incorporate into flour mixture.
Add remaining ingredients. Stir/mix until dough is combined. If mixing by hand, once ingredients are combined knead dough until completely mixed and form into a round and place on a lined baking sheet. If mixing in stand mixer, mix on low until just combined, then increase speed to medium until dough forms. Shape into a round loaf and place onto a lined baking tray. Score the top with an X.
Bake at 400 degrees for 50-60 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean from center of loaf.
