My Mother's Homemade Irish Soda Bread
By: Liam Gibbons
Published: Saturday, March 3, 2012 - 10:17am

Ingredients




3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsps baking powder
1 cup sunflower seeds (1/4 cup for decoration)
1 cup oats
1 tsp salt
500 mls buttermilk
100mls water

Preparation

1 Put oven to 400 F 2 Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl and make a well in the center. Add the buttermilk and stir until you have a dry pale dough. 3 Add water a little at a time until the dough comes together. Make sure you don't add too much water as this can make the dough too wet and give the loaf an impossibly hard crust. 4 Lightly dust a workspace with some flour. Knead the dough and keep adding flour till it becomes easy to work with and roll into a ball. 5 Place the ball on a lined baking sheet and shape it out into a circle or an oval shape like the photo above. 6 Score a cross into the loaf with a knife and sprinkle the 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds on top, pushing them into the dough gently. Bake for 20 mins, turn the tray around, and bake for another 20 mins. 7 Let cool for 20-30 mins. If you cut into it as soon as it's out of the oven, the bread will turn doughy at the centre and won't be a very nice texture.

About

Soda bread is a staple for any irish diet. And since I was pretty much raised on it, I miss it very much. So I have taken my mother's recipe, tweaked it slightly and I present you with my recipe for Irish Soda Bread.