Happy Irish Day!
I make soda bread once a year, and have been using the same recipe since the '70s. I got the recipe from my Irish mother, who clipped it out of the newspaper in California.
This year, I’m cooking it in the slow cooker. Here’s what it looks like before baking
it’ll be 2-3 hours before I can take an after picture…
Irish Soda Bread
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put a shallow pan of hot water on the lower rack.
Mix together
2-1/2 cups flour. I use white whole wheat, or AP white, or a mix of white and whole wheat.
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup sugar
Stir in about 1 cup sour milk or buttermilk (OR any kind of dairy or nondairy milk plus a teaspoon of vinegar. The acid works with the soda to make the dough rise). Use enough so all the flour incorporates, but it’s not soggy.
Mix in
1/2 cube (1/4 cup) melted butter.
2 Tbs or more caraway seeds
1/2 cup raisins (i leave these out, don’t like them)
Plop dough into a 9" round cake pan, cut a cross in the top, bake at 400 until raised, then reduce heat to 350 until golden and yummy, about 1 hour.
Crockpot variation:
Plop dough into cold crock (paranoid me put in a piece of parchment paper and some oil) and cook on high for 2-3 hours.
I’ll report back when it’s done.
Done…overdone. At 2.5 hours, it still looked a little damp, so I left it in another 20 minutes. There’s a little dark brown along one edge, but mostly fine.
Thank goodness I used parchment paper on the bottom; it came out smoothy, but a bit was stuck to the side of the crock.
The loaf spread out to the shape of the crock, and the x a!most disappeared, both probably due to too much milk in the dough.
Tastes good, texture is fine. I’ll try more slow cooker breads.
