Irish Soda Bread

Irish soda bread is among the easy Irish recipes that you can use for your St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. But once you try your hand at this Irish bread, you’ll likely be tempted to make it throughout the year because it’s that easy and, with its thick crust, it makes the perfect buttery bread.

You may think of Irish soda bread as a kind of giant scone, but it has such versatility with how you can use it as a nice thick buttered toast bite or a thin sandwich bread. What people love most about an authentic Irish soda bread recipe is the fact that you don’t need to mess around with yeast because the buttermilk and baking soda interact to create fluffiness.

For even more levity, you can add an egg, but you don’t need the egg.

Looking for a great bread-type bite? Try one of our scone recipes: Blueberry Scones, Strawberry Scones, or Apple & Cinnamon Scones.

Ingredients to Make Irish Soda Bread

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and gather these ingredients:

• 4¼ cup flour
• 3 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1¾ cup buttermilk
• 1 cup raisins (optional)
• 5 Tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 egg (optional for density)

How to Make Irish Soda Bread

First combine your dry ingredients in one mixing bowl (flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt along with raisins if you’re adding them) and your wet ingredients in another (egg and buttermilk).

Then, finely chop the butter into cubes. Consider freezing the butter to make it more firm — you don’t want soft butter.

Use a pastry cutter or a fork (or even your fingers) to cut the butter into the flour, cutting it into pea-sized pieces incorporated in the flour.

Pour the buttermilk/egg mixture into the flour and fold until all the flour is moistened and the mixture becomes a dough. Then knead the dough just for about 15 seconds (but definitely don’t over-knead it or you will get flat bread!) and shape the dough into a ball. Remember just knead the dough enough so that the ingredients are incorporated.

You can score the top of the dough ball with a deep X shape. This allows the bread to rise without cracking the crunchier crust.

Place the dough on a cast iron skillet or baking pan, cover loosely with aluminum foil, and bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown on the outside.

One way to tell if your Irish bread is done cooking is to thump it in the center and listen for a kind of hollow-like sound, not a squishy sound. But if you want to get technical, use an instant-read thermometer reads 200 degrees to 205 degrees (F).

Let the bread cool for at least 15 minutes and cut with a bread knife. Enjoy with a butter spread, jam, honey, or some cheese. If you want to slice it thinly, you can even use the bread as sandwich bread.

Also try: Coconut and Lime Cookies.