Irish Cream Soda Bread

[saltshaker]

Hidden away in the Bread volume of the Time-Life Good Cook series is a truly spectacular Irish Cream Soda Bread. Unfortunately, while overseas, I've left behind a good portion of my library in New York. This is one of those breads that I love making for special dinners. Anyone happen to have a copy of the book who could post or e-mail me the recipe? Gracias in advance!

[Woods]

Hidden away in the Bread volume of the Time-Life Good Cook series is a truly spectacular Irish Cream Soda Bread. Unfortunately, while overseas, I've left behind a good portion of my library in New York. This is one of those breads that I love making for special dinners. Anyone happen to have a copy of the book who could post or e-mail me the recipe? Gracias in advance!

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Hola! The recipe in my book is called Soda Bread (White) and is from "Irish Recipes Traditional and Modern".

4 c flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 c buttermilk or sourmilk

Preheat to 400

Grease and 8" cast iron skillet and warm in oven

Sift dry ingredients, add milk, knead till smooth. Place in preheated pan and cut an "X" in the top. Cover and bake ~ 40 mns or until golden.

Bon Apetit! Woods

[Maison Rustique]

Is your recipe actually made with Irish Cream, thus making a sweet bread? Not sure this is what you're looking for, but it's my Mom's recipe for regular Irish Soda Bread. It's the only recipe for it that I truly like--very moist.

Mom’s Irish Soda Bread

3 ½ cups flour

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

1 t. salt

1 pint sour cream

½ t. baking soda

1 cup raisins

2 t. baking powder

2 t. caraway seeds

Mix dry ingredients. Fold in eggs and sour cream. Stir in raisins and seeds. Mold into round loaf, (Will be sticky.) put into greased pan and sprinkle with flour. Cut a cross in top. Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour or until light brown.

[saltshaker]

It has a faint element of sweetness, but isn't a sweet bread with raisins and such. I'm not even sure why, in particular it's considered "Irish" - maybe there was an explanation with the recipe, something the T-L series was good about. The basic soda bread recipe above sounds, good, but isn't quite it - I remember one of the things about it was that it used heavy cream, which was part of what gave it its richness and faint sweetness. I've tried lots of soda breads, and it was the probably best one I'd ever come across.

Edited March 15, 2006 by saltshaker (log)

[eatrustic]

The recipe that Woods gave you is the only Soda Bread recipe in the TL Breads book. The demo (photo) section uses whole wheat and white flour while the recipe in the back uses white flour only but ....sorry no cream soda bread in this book.

Perhaps it was another book?

[saltshaker]

No, I'm pretty sure of it - I wonder if there was more than one printing of this series with changes? I'll have to give the one above a try, but I'm certain that the version I have been making used heavy cream rather than buttermilk - though, it was indeed a simple recipe like that one. Now I'm wondering if someone had suggested that I take that recipe and make the ingredient substitution...

[eatrustic]

If you subbed cream for the buttermilk you would have to use baking powder instead of soda as there would be no acidic element to trigger the rising process....thus it wouldn't be a "Soda Bread".

Perhaps try half cream, half buttermilk.

When you finally make it back to your cooking library to verify all this, ressurect the thread and let us know where the truth lies!

[Corinna Dunne]

I don't have the book you're referring to, but I have a suggestion. If you are using heavy cream instead of buttermilk, your recipe may have specified cream of tartar to use with the bread soda (this is basically the acid / alkaline composition of baking powder). Use 2 parts of cream of tartar to 1 part of bread soda.

Soda bread is not traditionally made with cream, although I clearly remember making it as a child, with a slick of unpasteurised, sour cream, at the big farmhouse table in my godmother's house. Those were the days!

[highchef]

Hidden away in the Bread volume of the Time-Life Good Cook series is a truly spectacular Irish Cream Soda Bread. Unfortunately, while overseas, I've left behind a good portion of my library in New York. This is one of those breads that I love making for special dinners. Anyone happen to have a copy of the book who could post or e-mail me the recipe? Gracias in advance!

←

Hola! The recipe in my book is called Soda Bread (White) and is from "Irish Recipes Traditional and Modern".

4 c flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 c buttermilk or sourmilk

Preheat to 400

Grease and 8" cast iron skillet and warm in oven

Sift dry ingredients, add milk, knead till smooth. Place in preheated pan and cut an "X" in the top. Cover and bake ~ 40 mns or until golden.

Bon Apetit! Woods

←

Is this from T-L good cook or Foods of the world? Both are good. i can check my good cook book, but fotw is boxed in the attic until I can get to them. I'll see what I've got with heavy cream.

[saltshaker]

I feel like I've started a train wreck!

My recollection is that the recipe had part baking soda and part baking powder in it. But, I'm going to give the buttermilk version a try and see how it comes out. Perhaps my mind is just gone feeble without soda bread...

[butterscotch]

eggs in a soda bread? ain't that sort of missing the point?

Is your recipe actually made with Irish Cream, thus making a sweet bread? Not sure this is what you're looking for, but it's my Mom's recipe for regular Irish Soda Bread. It's the only recipe for it that I truly like--very moist.

Mom’s Irish Soda Bread

3 ½ cups flour     

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

1 t. salt

1 pint sour cream

½ t. baking soda

1 cup raisins

2 t. baking powder

2 t. caraway seeds

Mix dry ingredients. Fold in eggs and sour cream. Stir in raisins and seeds. Mold into round loaf, (Will be sticky.) put into greased pan and sprinkle with flour. Cut a cross in top. Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour or until light brown.

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[saltshaker]

Why? Baking soda is replacing yeast, not eggs... Eggs would add richness to the bread, they'd only provide some leavening if they were whipped.

eggs in a soda bread? ain't that sort of missing the point?

[Corinna Dunne]

Well... traditionally there are no eggs as this would give you a more "cakey" bread, but it would still taste good.

[Trishiad]

4 Year old and I just made Deb's Mom's Soda Bread. YUM! Smeared with a little Kerry Gold butter and eaten warm for breakfast this morning, we're happy happy.

We also made the chocolate orange soda bread from epicurious. We subbed dried cherries for the candied orange peel ( I know I know) and it's yummers too. Now we need to invite some friends over to share.

thanks Deb!

[Maison Rustique]

4 Year old and I just made Deb's Mom's Soda Bread.  YUM!  Smeared with a little Kerry Gold butter and eaten warm for breakfast this morning, we're happy happy.

We also made the chocolate orange soda bread from epicurious.  We subbed dried cherries for the candied orange peel ( I know I know) and it's yummers too.  Now we need to invite some friends over to share.

thanks Deb!

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You're welcome! While you were posting, I was entering it into RecipeGullet.

[aznsailorboi]

I tried your recipe last night M.R. it was good but a little too sweet. if i cut down on the sugar in half and added half of the salt would that affect the rise and composition of the dough? im making another one tonight for a St. Patrick's day dinner at a friend's house tonight.

[K8memphis]

I tried your recipe last night M.R. it was good but a little too sweet. if i cut down on the sugar in half and added half of the salt would that affect the rise and composition of the dough? im making another one tonight for a St. Patrick's day dinner at a friend's house tonight.

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Everything affects everything but I recommend Keeping all the salt & go ahead & half the sugar. Should be fine.

Edited to say>> umm, if you want you could get some green food color and you could paint on some shamrocks if you wanted to get a little crazy. Or one big outline of a shamrock Like after it bakes--when it's still hot--paint it on maybe???? You could mix some green color with some egg yolk & use it for paint--stick it back in the oven for a few minutes to set. Or I would stick it under the broiler but watch it carefully. Maybe...

Edited March 17, 2006 by K8memphis (log)

[Trishiad]

There are savory soda bread recipes on epicurious and foodtv. I would use one of those rather than trying to make this recipe more savory. It's perfectly sweet and is just as it's meant to be. It's not really a dinner recipe.

[foodiehall]

I've been making Irish soda bread for years using several recipes. Finished product has always turned out well, no complaints from anyone. A couple days ago I decided to try a new recipe for soda bread which was featured in the food section of my local newspaper. The only difference I noticed was that this recipe called for regular milk instead of buttermilk. OK....so I mixed up the batter, formed the disc-like loaf and baked it---nothing unusual, texture seemed right, looked fine when I took it out of the oven. At dinner, hub and I bit into pieces of this bread about the same time....and almost simultaneously spit the stuff out into a napkin. Ugh....I've never tasted bitter bread like that in my life! It was terrible...and took me a while to get rid of the taste in my mouth. What could have gone wrong? I bake often so none of the ingredients were out-of-date. I reviewed the recipe and can't recall omitting anything. Possibly the sugar was left out, although I recall washing the measuring cup I would have used for the sugar.....maybe I'm losing my mind?! Recipe called for the usual ingredients: flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, shortening/butter, (regular) milk, currants. Any ideas as to the mystery of the bitter bread?

[andiesenji]

Baking soda needs an acid to balance or act with it as a levening agent. With regular milk you should use baking powder or at least something with acid such as tartaric acid better known as Cream of Tartar. Too much of one or the other will produce a bitter taste.

Even adding a teaspoon or so of lemon juice or white vinegar to the milk will work okay.

Edited March 18, 2006 by andiesenji (log)

[McDuff]

I just pulled two soda breads out of the oven that came from a recipe in The Boston Globe. It called for a cup of sugar to four cups of flour. They spread quite a bit, but look good. I wonder if that is a misprint. Seems like a real lot of sugar. Also had 1 stick butter rubbed in, 4 t baking powder, 3/4 t soda, 1 egg and 1 1/2 cups buttermilk.

[Shalmanese]

Another possible reason is that the baking soda might be off. Baking soda is notorious for absorbing odours and your soda, even though it might be relatively new, might still have caught something else from your pantry if it was left open to the air.

[eatrustic]

My money is with Andiesenji, the lack of an acid to combine with the soda will give an unpleasant taste.

There's always the off chance it was some contaminant but you seem to have covered that base.

....it is interesting that the bread rose as usual. I would have thought that it would have risen little at best.

[butterscotch]

because well, between that and the sour cream, and all the sugar... it's not even close to the taste of texture of soda bread anymore. you can call it whatever you want, you might like it better than soda bread, but it's something else entirely.

Why? Baking soda is replacing yeast, not eggs... Eggs would add richness to the bread, they'd only provide some leavening if they were whipped.

eggs in a soda bread? ain't that sort of missing the point?

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[Maison Rustique]

because well, between that and the sour cream, and all the sugar... it's not even close to the taste of texture of soda bread anymore. you can call it whatever you want, you might like it better than soda bread, but it's something else entirely.

And that's probably why it's the only Irish Soda Bread I really like.