I baked Martha Stewart's 'easy' Irish soda bread recipe, and it definitely didn't live up to its name
- In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I tried making Martha Stewart's "easy" Irish soda bread recipe.
- While I enjoyed the end product, I definitely wouldn't call it an easy treat to bake.
Before making Martha Stewart's Irish soda bread for St. Patrick's Day, I combed through my pantry and realized I had a few of the ingredients already.
In the US, Irish soda bread is most popular around St. Patrick's Day, although in Ireland, it's enjoyed year-round. If you're like me, you might be wondering why it's called "soda" bread — glad you asked. The name comes from the baking soda that's used to make the dough rise, as opposed to yeast. It also might not even be truly Irish, according to Today.
Stewart's recipe calls for butter, flour, sugar, raisins, caraway seeds, baking soda, salt, baking powder, buttermilk, and eggs. At home, I had the eggs, salt, and baking powder, but I needed to visit the grocery store for the full list of ingredients.
I'd never actually seen (or smelled) buttermilk before this recipe, so I wasn't sure if something was wrong with it, but a quick Google told me that buttermilk has a naturally tangier smell than regular milk, so that was a relief.
I also searched my grocery store for 10 minutes before finally finding the caraway seeds, which have a slight licorice taste, kind of like anise.
After preheating the oven to 350 degrees, the next step was to combine the dry ingredients.
The dry ingredients include the flour, sugar, raisins, caraway seeds, baking soda, salt, and baking powder. Some recipes call for other things to be added besides raisins and caraway seeds — sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, raisins, currents, or dried apple bits are all common substitutes.
In a separate bowl, I combined the wet ingredients.
That's the buttermilk, eggs, and melted butter. The recipe instructed me to whisk them together.
Next up was to combine the wet and dry ingredients.
As a New York City resident, my kitchen isn't that big. Finding enough counter space for both of these large bowls while my roommate was cooking dinner took some creativity, to say the least.
You can see just how much space is being taken up by the many bowls and ingredients, plus my roommate's dinner on the stove.
I could probably use some of these space-saving gadgets.
In order to properly mix the ingredients, Stewart's recipe recommended kneading the dough on a lightly floured surface.
I already knew I was going to need more than a "lightly" floured surface. The dough was so sticky in the bowl that I was having a hard time mixing it, so I thought I would put more flour than I needed. I was grossly mistaken.
The dough ate up the flour faster than I could've imagined.
Again, you're not even supposed to knead Irish soda bread, but, with this recipe, I don't see how that would be possible.
I covered my hands in flour, too, but that didn't seem to do anything.
Maybe you can't tell just how sticky this is ...
Here's the aftermath, despite adding an extra cup or two of flour on my hands and in the dough.
I tried to get the dough to be less sticky, but nothing worked.
I ended up having to toss my bag of flour because it got covered in dough when I was trying to add more.
Thankfully, it was almost empty anyway.
And there was a fair amount of dough stuck to the cutting board.
At that point, I just really wanted to wash my hands.
Before putting the dough on the baking pan, I had to butter the pan to prevent sticking.
Irish soda bread, thankfully, does not require a loaf pan.
Next up, after attempting to make a round loaf, was just to brush butter on top.
Brushing butter on bread before baking adds color and flavor.
The last step was to add an "X" or cross to the top.
"It's scientific, primarily, because it allows the heat to penetrate into the thickest part of the bread, so it assists cooking. And obviously the cross is a cruciform shape, so in a Catholic country that had a resonance — it had the symbolic note of crossing the breads and giving thanks," chef and cooking teacher Rory O'Connell told Today.
O'Connell also said that there's an expression, "to let the devil out of the bread," that might play into it.
However, my dough did not want to be crossed. It would disappear almost immediately.
This was the face of someone who was overjoyed to have washed her hands free of sticky soda-bread dough.
That's me and my handiwork.
The bread stayed in the oven for 45 to 50 minutes.
The photos show how the bread looked after 10 and 30 minutes in the oven. I was a little nervous after 30 when it still looked relatively raw.
Ta-da! After 50 minutes, I pulled out a pretty legitimate-looking loaf of Irish soda bread.
The trademark X on top was missing, though.
It looked like an oversized scone, to me.
The raisins were visible and it had a good golden color.
When I cut it open, I was pleasantly surprised.
The sticky dough had dried out and become a crumbly, scone-esque loaf. I was pleased.
I spread some butter on my creation ... and found it was pretty good!
When I tasted a piece, I realized that I've never had anything quite like it. The bitter, tangy caraway seeds and the sweet raisins were the perfect complement to each other, while the butter counteracted the dryness a bit.
I'm not sure that my bread came out perfectly, but I was still proud of my baking skills. However, Stewart's website calls this "easy," and I wouldn't characterize it that way. It was time-consuming and super messy. It also took a while to clean everything up.
In the future, I'll probably stick with eating someone else's homemade Irish soda bread.
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