Richard Corrigan's Irish soda bread

By Birgitta

Chosen by Mark Hix: Real soda bread is made with buttermilk. The kind of yellowy buttermilk I drank as a child, which is the liquid left over after cream has been churned into butter and still has buttery bits floating in it, is hard to find these days unless you live near a farm or dairy that can sell you some. Mostly they don't think there is a market for it. Some specialist food shops sell real farm buttermilk, but what you tend to find in supermarkets is branded "cultured buttermilk", which is made by adding a culture to pasteurised skimmed milk and/or skimmed milk powder to produce something which has that slightly sour flavour of traditional buttermilk but is thicker. Obviously the real thing is best, but if you can't find it, use the cultured version, and if you can't find that, use milk instead. The cakey nature of soda bread makes it prone to drying out, so putting a damp cloth over it after it has come out of the oven and while it is cooling down helps to keep as much moisture as possible inside. You can keep a damp cloth over it until it is finished, but in our house that was not for very long. It's the kind of bread you put out on the table with a meal, and by the end of it the loaf is finished. Soda bread should be eaten the same day, or toasted the next. When we first made this at Lindsay House we added black treacle because it was meant to go with cheese, and the richness was terrific with some of the harder cheeses. This is a slightly lighter version which people really love.

From The Clatter of Forks and Spoons by Richard Corrigan

Ingredients

• 250 g plain flour
• 10 g salt
• 15 g bicarbonate of soda
• 250 g wholemeal flour
• 150 g jumbo oat flakes
• 1 tbs clear honey
• 1 tbs black treacle
• 500 ml buttermilk

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas 6. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Make a well in the centre, then mix in the honey, treacle and buttermilk, working everything together lightly with your hands until you have a loose, wet dough. With floured hands, shape the dough into a round and lift on to the lined baking sheet. Using a knife, mark a cross in the top. Put into the oven and bake for around 45 minutes, or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the base. Transfer to a wire rack, drape a damp cloth over the top and leave to cool.