April 25, 2013 - Classic Irish Soda Bread

A couple of days ago, I tried my hand at the Black Forest Cake recipe.  This was, more or less, a complete failure.  The recipe the in book uses a chocolate Genoise (which, if you are like me you had never even heard of before) as the base cake, cut into three layers.  Let's just say I could just barely get mine into two layers.  It was so dense and overly chewy, when it is supposed to be a light and fluffy cake.  I would say this was my first complete failure.  While I did finish it through, all but one slice ended up in the trash.  However, I'm even more determined now to get that cake right, but I will save that for another day I think.  Tonight, I decided to make peanut soup for dinner (I LOVE peanut soup), and I wanted a bread to go with it.  I flipped through the bread recipes in both the Yeast Breads chapter and the Quick Breads chapter, and I decided on the Classic Irish Soda Bread.  I didn't have a ton of time, and as this is not a yeast based recipe, it didn't need all the long rising and resting times, so it was a perfect fit.

 

Let me preface this by saying I have never ever made any type of bread in my life, so this was an entirely new experience for me.  Although, based on this recipe I think this was a pretty good one to start with.  After whisking my dry ingredients together, I added the butter and buttermilk, then turned the dough out onto my floured surface.  This is where I become completely lost.

 

 

Having never made a bread loaf before, I had naturally never had to knead anything before.  To make matters worse, this recipe specifically talks a lot about using "light hands" and not over kneading.  Oh boy.  Thank goodness my sister was close by to give me some pointers as I dug my hands in and took a stab at my first kneading process.

 

 

I got the dough into a pretty good shaped round disc, although I probably could have done a little better job at joining it cohesively together.  Overall, though, for a first time I was pretty proud.  With as many bread recipes that are in this book, I will have plenty of time to work on perfecting this process.  The top was scored and into the oven it went.  I was incredibly happy with how this bread turned out.  The exterior was crusty and browned nicely, and the interior was nice and dense, but not at all dry.

 

For a first try at a bread, I am pretty happy.  I'm actually pretty excited to branch out and try some of the yeast based bread recipes (I am a big fan of rye bread!).  Now if I could just make a decent Genoise cake....