Learn how to make the best healthy soda bread from scratch with this easy recipe! You only need 10 minutes and 5 common, everyday ingredients. This (mostly!) traditional Irish soda bread is incredibly soft, moist, and tender inside, even with no yeast or kneading. It’s quick and simple to make any day of the week – and it’s perfect for St. Patrick’s Day too, of course!
I’ve updated this blog post and recipe since I originally shared it. I think this new and improved version is even better! Still, you can find the previous version here, if you’re interested.
After he partially retired a few years ago, my dad started cooking and baking a lot more. He always enjoyed both, but other than for Thanksgiving and Christmas, his busy work schedule and long hours often prevented him from making anything too elaborate or time-intensive.
Irish Soda Bread Recipe (traditional Brown Bread)
His bread. He baked plenty of loaves from scratch, carefully proofing the yeast and kneading the dough, just like he taught me to do with homemade rolls as a little girl.
Classic rye, garlic naan, rosemary focaccia, rustic cottage loaves… Even multiple types of dough for pizzas made completely from scratch (including the sauce!). Each looked just as beautiful as the last, with soft insides and a lovely crumb, exactly the way they’d be in a bakery or on “The Great British Bake-Off” bread week episodes.
The times I drove home to visit, I usually found remnants of those loaves in the fridge, and new ones often appeared once or twice during my trips too. I snuck multiple slices almost every day… Freshly baked homemade bread is just too tempting!
Easy Irish Soda Bread (prepped In 10 Mins!)
This simple Irish soda bread recipe. It tastes so cozy and comforting, with the flavors and textures you’d want from homemade bread, but it barely takes any time to make. There’s no yeast, proofing, or kneading – and it takes less than 10 minutes to prep!
Note: Because it tastes best when eaten the same day it’s made, I purposely designed this soda bread recipe to yield a small- to modest-sized loaf.
Most “normal” bread recipes depend on yeast to make them rise. Because it takes a while for yeast to work its magic, these recipes normally tell you to proof the yeast to activate it. Then they often instruct you to make and knead the dough, let it rest and rise, punch it down, shape it, let it rest and rise again… And – finally! – bake.
Brennan's Irish Soda Bread Recipe
Simpler than that. It uses baking soda (aka sodium bicarbonate, if you’re a nerd like me!) as its leavening agent. Baking soda is a base, and it’s immediately activated when mixed with a liquid-form acid. No proofing, resting, or waiting required – so it’s much quicker to make!
Now that you know what it is, let’s cover the ingredients you need to make this healthy soda bread recipe! The original and most traditional Irish soda bread recipes only required a few main ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. Over the years, people added other things to enrich the dough, such as eggs, sugar, and butter or oil for flavor, as well as mix-ins like caraway seeds, raisins, or currents. However…
Like how the traditional versions are faster and easier to make! So for this healthy soda bread recipe, you’ll use mostly traditional ingredients. I bet you have all of them in your kitchen already!
Traditional Irish Soda Bread Recipe
Flour. My favorite flour to use is white whole wheat flour. Here in the US, our regular whole wheat flour comes from a heartier variety of red wheat, whereas white whole wheat flour is made by finely grinding a special type of soft white wheat (hence the name!). It’s not a blend of all-purpose white flour and regular whole wheat flour!
White whole wheat flour has the same health benefits as regular whole wheat flour (like extra fiber and micronutrients!), but it has a lighter color, as well as a lighter taste and texture that’s closer to all-purpose flour. It’s a great flour for healthy baking because you get the best of both worlds!
Customizable. It works just as well with regular whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, and yes, even all-purpose flour! So just use whichever one of those options you already have in your pantry.
Best Ever Irish Soda Bread Recipe
Tip: I also included my recommended gluten free alternatives in the Notes section of the recipe, if you’d like to make this healthy soda bread gluten free!
Salt. I like my soda bread on the salty side, so I often use two types of salt: regular table salt in the dough (always) and flaky sea salt sprinkled on top, just before baking (optional – but really fun!). I love how the latter adds a bright pop of flavor!
Because there’s no sugar in this soda bread, I also like to use a bit more salt in the dough compared to some other recipes. I’ve found that gives the loaf substantially more flavor. If you’re not as big of a salt fan as I am, it’s completely fine to cut back. Like I mentioned, this recipe is really customizable to your preferences and tastes!
Irish Soda Bread
Milk. I generally use unsweetened vanilla almond milk because that’s what my family and I keep in our refrigerators most often. However… Just about any milk – dairy or non-dairy! – will work. (Are you sensing a theme here?)
I’ve also used nonfat milk, unsweetened cashew milk, rice milk, vanilla soy milk (that’s what I used in my previous version, and its sweetness gave the soda bread a lovely flavor!)… So feel free to use what’s in your fridge. Customization is the name of the game!
Tip: If you use unsweetened vanilla almond milk (or any other non-dairy milk!), then your healthy soda bread will be vegan – because it’ll be both dairy free and egg free!
American Style Irish Soda Bread Recipe
Vinegar. More specifically, distilled white vinegar. This is the acid that activates the baking soda. When you mix the two together, it creates air bubbles (aka carbon dioxide). Those air bubbles make your soda bread rise, and they also create a moist, soft, tender texture.
Tip: If you don’t have distilled white vinegar (or it’s not an ingredient commonly sold in grocery stores in your part of the world!), try to substitute another vinegar with a similar pH level of about 2.5. Lemon juice’s pH is around 2-3, so it should also work!
No buttermilk? While fresh buttermilk is an ingredient in the most traditional soda bread recipes, it’s not something I normally keep on hand. Therefore, I opted for the DIY shortcut of milk and vinegar instead. That way, it’s easy to whip up this healthy soda bread at a moment’s notice! 😉
Vegan Low Fodmap Irish Soda Bread
One bowl + a fork. You’ll mix together the dry ingredients first. Make a well in the center, pour in the wet ingredients, and stir everything together. It’s that simple!
The space between the tines of the fork allows the ingredients to pass through and mix more efficiently. This means it takes less time to make the dough
Shape + score. The dough will be a bit sticky, so moisten your hands with a bit of water first. Shape it into a circle that’s 1 ½” tall, then make two cuts in the shape of a (+) sign in the top with a sharp knife. I’ve found a fillet knife works really well! This is called scoring the dough, and it lets steam (aka that carbon dioxide we talked about earlier!) escape while your loaf bakes.
Traditional Irish Soda Bread — Let's Dish Recipes
In the photo above, I cut the set of slits in each loaf differently. In the bottom loaf, I inserted the knife only ¼” to ½” deep. In the middle loaf, I went a little further, around ¾” deep. In the top loaf, I cut most of the way through the dough, stopping around ½” above the bottom.
In the bottom loaf, the top was almost entirely flat, but there was a deep crack almost all the way around its base. In the middle loaf, there were four small bumps in its top, and it had a small crack only around certain parts of its base (not all the way around!). In the top loaf, its top consisted of four huge peaks, and it didn’t have any cracks around its base. (The bumps and splits that you see are a result of me being lazy and not smoothing out the dough while shaping it!)
Therefore… When the top slits are very shallow, the steam finds another way out of the dough – and that usually means it bursts out the sides, which creates that noticeable crack near the base.
Ingredient Irish Soda Bread
Tip: After scoring the dough, sprinkle the top with flaky sea salt, if you’d like. It’s optional, but I love how much flavor it adds!
Bake. This soda bread bakes at a fairly high temperature, 425°F, which helps create a really nice crusty exterior. You’ll know it’s done when you can smell it – and when the top looks a nice golden brown!
Yes – to all of the above! As written, this healthy soda bread is vegan, dairy free, egg free, sugar free, whole wheat, and clean
0 Komentar