Tuesdays with Dorie: Irish Soda Bread

What’s more appropriate than  something Irish for the month of March?  This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Irish Soda Bread, was hosted by Carla of Chocolate Moosey and Cathleen of My Culinary Mission and was a perfect recipe for me to try out, hot on the heels of last month’s Tuesdays with Dorie (white loaves), my success with Australian Damper (basically soda bread) and peasant boule.  Yeah, I seem to be on a bit of a bread mission!

There’s actually not much to say about this one. It was easy.

I did misjudge the amount of liquid needed – it was a warm, dry day when I made it – and only added in some more buttermilk when I realised as I was gently kneading that it wasn’t quite coming together as expected.  No matter – I’m still new to this “know what looks and feels right” for bread so it’s all good.

Yeah, that weird stripe? I’m guessing it’s bits of buttermilk not mixed in properly. Oh well..  Further into the loaf, it looked better…

And about 1/4 of the way into the loaf it had all but disappeared (see top picture).  But a pretty good crumb and it was SO good toasted with butter and jam.  I wrapped the still warm loaf in clingfilm because I knew that it might help keep it a little fresh so Neil could taste it later in the day (typically soda bread is rock hard by the end of the day) and it worked pretty well.  He enjoyed a few slices with some soft brie and since he kept on eating it I am going to assume he liked it (that or he was starving!).  It was even ok the next day, sliced very thinly and toasted with more butter than I would normally use 😉

Would I make this again? Maybe. I really actually preferred the damper over this. But it’s all good. Me and bread, we’ll be friends by the end of this year.

Join us cooking through Dorie’s “Baking with Julia” in 2012 – read the rules and join Tuesdays with Dorie here.

Tuesdays with Dorie participants do not publish the recipes on our blogs except if we happen to be the host for the week, rather, we prefer if you purchase Baking with Julia for yourselves which you can do here on Amazon or Amazon Canada. Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository.  Go on, you know you want to.  It’s a beautiful book. 🙂

46 thoughts on “Tuesdays with Dorie: Irish Soda Bread”

  1. This wasn’t my favorite bread either.The texture was great and it looked nice but the flavor was lacking.It probably tasted better with honey.

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  2. This was good…and easy. Which was a huge relief after the rugelach.
    It looks lovely – and the stripe adds an interesting visual effect 🙂

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  3. Looks beautiful! Such an easy recipe that produces such a lovely treat! I made two…one plain and one sweet loaf! Both wonderfully delicious!

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  4. Yay for bread posts! That crumb looks all soft and delicious! I’ve never made soda bread before and I didn’t know that it doesn’t keep well.. makes for a good excuse to eat a bunch of bread at once

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  5. your bread looks lovely. I’m happy I decided on some changes for more flavor and texture. Your bread makes me think of honey or jam as a topping…it looks beautiful.

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  6. Mardi, I sorta thought the “wierd stripes” were interesting and wondered how you achieved that! But, that’s just me. What the Dorie/Julie is all about for me is polishing up the few baking techniques I had along with learning new ones. That’s happening obviously, for both of us. Mary

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  7. The loaf looks great, weird stripe or no. I like the pratice we’ve been getting with bread, both in TwD and FFwD. I do have to say that I prefer brown soda bread to this white version, though.

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  8. I love baking bread, I just wish I could really get it right. 😉 Like you, I’m only at the beginning of my bread baking love affair, I hope by the end, I have that “feel”. I think it looks beautiful, and here’s the great thing about homemade bread – no matter what it looks like, it usually still tastes awesome!

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  9. I thought maybe you had added in something with that ‘weird’ stripe. It was almost too easy to be sooooo good. Mine was really wet, too, and sticky, but it came out just fine.

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