Traditional Brown Irish Soda Bread

  We recently returned from Ireland and one of my favorite things from Ireland is soda bread. I want to set the record straight on this subject. Many people think Irish Soda Bread is some sort of fruit cake like bread with nuts and dried fruit. It doesn't help when you can go to tourist type places in Ireland and buy something that resembles the description above. Understand one thing, soda bread is peasant food, damn good peasant food, but peasant food none-the-less. The traditional version is very simple. The people who subsisted on this bread didn't have an abundance of sugar, nuts and dried fruit.

  I looked around on the internet for a traditional recipe and got a wide veriety of results. I picked what I thought was the closest version and adapted as necessary. The traditional recipe contains only whole wheat flour, baking soda, salt and buttermilk. Here is the recipe I used:

Traditional Brown Irish Soda Bread (2 loaves or 4 rounds)

4 c whole wheat flour

1 c flour
1/3 c rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 c buttermilk

  Preheat oven to 425 degrees farenheit. I didn't have buttermilk so I used the common substitute of 1 tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice for every cup of milk. Combine all ingedients in an appropriate bowl. Only work the dough as much as is needed to thoroughly combine ingedients, no more. I put my dough in a Pyrex loaf pan. Bake for 40 minutes.
  For a more traditional result, use irish oat meal instead of rolled oats and form the loaves into rounds and score the top of the loaf into quarters.
 
  Of course, the final results makes a great vehicle for butter and our homemade peach jam. Enjoy!

TTFN
B