I got in a conversation about irish soda bread with a baker last week- and we both decided that without carraway seeds is best! I usually like it without raisins as well, but this recipe sounds fantastic and the picture makes me want to use raisins!

Kris, if I don't have buttermilk I use an old trick my mother taught me: add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to a cup of milk and let it sit for a few minutes. Instant buttermilk! It works great in recipes.

And because I can't usually use a carton of butttermilk before it goes bad, I found a dry, cultured buttermilk powder in the baking aisle of the grocery store that can be added to recipes. The brand name is SaCo, and it's one of those things that's usually on the bottom shelves.

Whenever I have a recipe that calls for buttermilk, I substitute the same amount of regular milk but with vinegar or lemon juice added (roughly 1 tablespoon of per cup of milk, I think). Let that mixture sit on the counter for a few minutes until it starts to get a bit lumpy on top, then it's ready to use.

I got this from www.ochef.com

To make pretend buttermilk, add 1-3/4 tablespoons of cream of tartar to a cup of milk, or add a tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar to a cup of milk and let it stand for 5 to 10 minutes. In many baking recipes, you can also just use plain yogurt or sour cream instead of buttermilk.

We made Irish food this month for a party and I was surprised at how good and easy it all was. The bread was delicious and we made it plain without raisins or carraway. So simple to no rising and virtually no kneading.

From my one and only trip to Ireland aeons ago, I remember the soda bread too...mostly served with brilliant chowders/fish soups... lots of salmon and trout in those soups if I recall... as the mornings start to get crisper here in Australia, I may just have to think about a good chowder recipe to go with your soda bread.........

This was a wonderful addition to our big Irish breakfast this morning. We substituted currants for the raisins, and added a bit of orange zest. Not quite traditional Irish, but delicious, for sure.

I've tried many of your recipes, Elise, and they have all been well received by my family. Now, when we're looking for something special, my two sons suggest an internet stop at Simply Recipes.

Hi Elise!

Your soda bread looks absolutely gorgeous. I love that you cooked it in a skillet. Thanks so much for the link. :-) I appreciate it. Luckily, soda bread translates easily to gluten-free.

I tried this recipie and took it to a corned beef and cabbage dinner Saturday night. Everyone loved it. However, it didn't get cooked in the center...it was still raw dough in there, but the outside was dark brown. I used a convection oven and I think that may have been the problem. Any suggestions?

BTW, I make two loaves, one with raisins and one with caraway. I loved 'em both!

I made this recipe on Saturday, St. Patrick's day. I had great trust, as I usually don't try new recipes for company! It was the best soda bread I've ever made. It had just the right amount of tender and chew, and reminded me of childhood bread from the bakery. The only difference (and I think this is because it was fresh from the oven) is that the crust was too crisp for my memory. But overall, crisp crust I think is better! The dough was very sticky and hard to slash, so I did get a big crack. I also added a handful (about a tablespoon?) of caraway seeds. Yum!

Well, I am not a "cook" or "chef" by any means. My Nana, Celia Shea made the BEST Irish Bread around ever! No caraway seeds allowed. After several attempts through the years, I have tried to make the very same delicious bread. I think I succeeded once, but that was probably beginners luck. Now, in my late 20's I have finally found a website that actually tells me (with wonderful pictures and instructions) how to make my Nana's Irish Bread. I just made it..and it is great..THANKS!

regarding Irish soda bread, the true recipe calls only for baking soda,buttermilk, a tiny amount of sugar and flour,no eggs nor butter, soda farls(quarters of the dough) are made on a griddle and soda bread (known as bannock) is baked in the oven. Adding two tablespoons of treacle(dark molasses)and less buttermilk to this recipe gives a delicious flavour. Anyone who lives near a costco store will find Odlums ready mix flours for all kinds of Irish bread. My friends in NJ and Utah have become Irish bread makers using this product. Using wholemeal flour gives you Irish wheaten bread. Here in Northern Ireland we use soda bread for the ulster breakfast of bacon,sausage,egg,potato bread and soda bread.

Last St. Patty's Day I made this, although I didn't have any raisins, so I used dried cherries instead, and it was FABULOUS. I highly suggest it.

I was very careful to follow the instructions for soda bread from your website. The dough was so sticky that I had to add a lot of flour - possibly 1/2 cup. I cooked it 35 minutes and it looked done. The bottom sounded hollow, and the top was lightly brown. I stuck a skewer in it, and it tested done. I let it cool, but when I cut into it, it was uncooked in the middle. What do you suppose I did wrong? Any suggestions? Jan

Hi Jan, every oven is different, so for yours it may just take a little longer to cook it through. ~Elise

Dear me, Elise, you've done it again! LOVE it!!

After the success of your Shrimp beurre d'orange and your wild mushroom soup, I have a request:

Elise, please teach me how to make tabouleh! I will only trust it if it's from you! :D

- your biggest fan.

I made this last night with cranberries and it was AWESOME. Thanks!

Hey yas! I am currently making this bread and.....I think this recipe calls for too much milk. My dough was so soupy. I ended up adding more flour, sugar and soda. Other recipes I've found only call for 1 cup of milk. Other than that, I am hoping the bread turns out good.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!!!!!

Happy St Patrick's Day!
All my friends are being boring and won't go out to get drunk, so I'm staying in and looking for recipes.

This is very different to the soda bread we have here in Ireland. When I was much younger, I think around 8, we made soda bread in school once. It was basically just 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of buttermilk 1tsp baking soda and 1tsp salt (so basic I still remember it). The whole thing was mixed together (BY HAND) and rolled into a flat circle. The circle is then qartered. Each quarter is what is known here as a farl. We cooked them on plates which are kind of like skillets, but were completely flat. I can't remember what they were actually called. Then at the end each farl was wrapped in what we call a tea towel for a few minutes (that cloth you dry your dishes with). It makes them taste better. Finally they're dusted lightly with more flour.

Farls are rarely (if ever) eaten "whole" or raw. They're generally always cut into two slices and then toasted. Soda farls are great with a proper Irish fry, lots of bacon, sausages, eggs (yuck), baked beans, grilled tomato and white pudding.

Try some!

Comment to kris use 1 part milk and 1 part sourcream (1 cup of each)

While your recipe looks good - our favorite is quite a bit different. The texture and 'bite' is so light! I always put in the caraway seeds and alternate between currents and raisins. The batch that I made this weekend was with the golden raisins and they were WONDERFUL!

Note - we bake ours in muffin tins.

Irish Rosie's Irish Soda Bread by 1Steve posted on Feb 25, 2002 via Recipezaar.com

3 1/2 c flour
1/2 c sugar
1/2 t baking soda
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 pint sour cream
2 eggs
2 T caraway seeds
3/4 c raisins

1. Combine dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
2. In a small bowl beat eggs and stir in sour cream.
3. Add the egg and sour cream mixture to the dry ingredients and
stir with a wooden spoon.
4. Batter will be very thick.
5. Add the raisins and caraway seeds and stir well with wooden
spoon or knead in with your hands.
6. Place batter in a greased 9 inch springform pan (or muffin tins).
7. Dust the top with enough flour so that you can pat the batter
like a bread dough evenly in the pan without it sticking to your
hands.
8. With a knife make a shallow crisscross on the top.
9. Bake for 50 minutes in a preheated 350ºF oven (Or approximately 15-18 minutes if baked in muffin tins).

Hi Elise,

I made Irish soda bread as a senior in high school for my English class. Reading your recipe and blog brought back memories.
As I have said before what one the best reasons to read your blog is the easy to use recipes.
Please forgive us all for tweeking your recipes okay.

Linda in Washington State

P.S. Its resurrection pecan meringue cookie time!

Hi Linda, indeed it is time for that cookie. I'll have to pull it forward. I think it is absolutely marvelous that people tweek the recipes and make them their own. That's what I do! In fact, I'm constantly editing the recipes on this site. The more I make them, the more I try to perfect them. Recipes are just guidelines anyway. Best to start with them and then explore from them. :-) ~Elise

Made this for my 86 yr old aunt who's very particular, & thumbs-up from her! PS Had to add more flour, as well.

Making this bread right now & the dough was very sticky. I added ½ cup more flour but it was still impossible to handle. Had no way to form it into a ball so I dumped it into a traditional bread pan; someone else mentioned increasing the salt & soda as an addition to adding more flour, but I'm not that advanced as a baker to know how much or when. I've lowered the baking temperature & will bake it for longer to make sure it is evenly done. I hope it turns out well because it's taken longer to make than I expected & been a lot more stressful. 30 minutes to go before I check the oven ... wish me luck!

Hi,

Thank you so much for this neat recipe. I love Raisin Bread but it costs me to much in the store so I decided to try this recipe. I have never made bread before in my life, other than bisquits, so I was amazed how easy it was. The Bread came out absolutely perfect. I have since then stocked up on Buttermilk and raisins and I make it every week.
Great recipe, quick, easy, and delicious.

Thanks,
Frank Woelke

I usually use a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar and enough milk to make a cup (whole would be best, but other kinds will work), let that sit for at least five minutes, that usually works pretty well for me. It's good with dried cranberries too.

My grandmother's maiden name was Fitzgerald, and we don't have to go too far back to find the ancestors that came over to America. I have also been to Ireland and had "real" Irish soda bread. My grandmother makes both this and the brown kind (using a mix of wheat and white flour), and the general conclusion is that the brown is better. The places where I had Irish bread in Ireland were in small towns with family-owned restaurants. They also served the brown kind. Each one was a little different, but none were white with raisins in them.

As others have said, if you're having trouble with the dough sticking or too soupy, you have to adjust for your humidity (and sometimes elevation). In Arizona, we can almost always use the quoted amount of buttermilk because it's so dry outside. When it's more humid, use less. It might take a few tries, but if you're a good cook, you can tell by the feel if it's a little too much or too little, and add by feel. If you end up with too much buttermilk, add a little more flour.

I make this exact recipe for some of my clients, though I thought it was from epicurious...oh well. it is SOOOOO delicious straight out of the oven with salted Irish butter. I use currants instead, which i like b/c they are smaller and then disperse more. I wish i wasn't gluten intolerant or i would eat it everyday!!!

Made this bread the other day and it was fantastic. I love cast iron cooking and this was the perfect recipe for one. Thanks.

I made this recipe yesterday and had the same issues as some of the others have had with the dough being too sticky. I too added more flour, at least a cup, managed to get it into a ball and cooked it at 425 on a cast iron skillet for 55 minutes. After 55 minutes it was not fully cooked, so I tented it with foil and placed it back into the oven for an additional 35 minutes.

In the end I felt the bottom was over cooked (meaning a very hard crust making it difficult to slice through with a bread knife and the texture of the bread itself was more dense than I was expecting.
Although it tasted and smelled fantastic I was expecting it to be more light in texture.

Would it have helped to add less buttermilk and more baking soda in this case?
And how would have using 1 tsp. of baking powder made a difference or not?

I am a novice baker and determined to get it right- your advice would be most helpful.

Hi Jenna, I just made this bread again yesterday and I think I know the problem. You should not have had to add a whole additional cup of flour. My guess is this, along with overkneading, and overcooking, caused the bread to be rather dense with a hard bottom. The dough should have a rather sticky and barely held together shaggy feel and appearance, much like you were making a shortbread biscuit. You should handle it only enough to have it come together. The more you handle the dough, the more tough the result will be. It should flatten out a bit when you put it in the cast iron pan. When you remove the bread from the oven, let it sit in the cast iron pan for 5-10 minutes or so before removing it to a rack. ~Elise

This was an amazing recipe! It lasted less than a day in my house. Without a doubt, I will be making this again and again.

Hi Elise,

I remember when this recipe first came on to your site. I have been making it ever since and have enjoyed it every time I did. The other day I chopped up some dried apricots I had and added them in with the raisens. This came out great and makes another variation that some of your readers may enjoy.

Thanks for the great recipes,
Frank Woelke

I made this bread tonight and it is delicious. My dough was also very sticky, but that was to be expected from what Elise said in the recipe and all the other comments. I baked it in a Le Creuset 9-inch cast iron skillet and it came out perfect. I agree with Lester that it does not need much kneading, and that mixing and dumping into the skillet is a very good idea, then smoothing over the top and slashing a criss-cross. I ended up adding another 1/2 cup flour, no more, so total of 4-1/2. A great recipe. I'm having a slice now with a "cuppa". Will toast it for breakfast in the morning. Thanks, Elise!

Dear Elise,

I made this recipe this afternoon while I was watching football and cooking a corned beef, cabbage and potatoe dinner. It's the first time I've ever tried to make a bread other than Pillsbury Grands. Your instructions were right on the money and the bread is just great. My daughter loves short bread so I'll make her some next time I visit her.

Thank you for a really tasty addition to my mundane suppers

Mark
Baltimore, MD

Hi Elise!

I've been making Irish Soda Bread with my very Irish mother and uncle since I was about 4. This recipe looks great! I've recently moved to Colorado, and was looking forward to making this bread for friends this weekend. Do you have nay suggestions for baking at altitude? I'm at almost 5,000 feet.

Thank you!
Kathleen

Hi Kathleen, as a near-sea-level dweller, I'm afraid I haven't the faintest idea how to adjust recipes to cook at high altitudes. You might want to do a little searching online for "high altitude baking" and see what you find. ~Elise

In this recipe, I decided to subsitute cranraisins for raisins, and then I decided to sprinkle a little sugar on top for a little sweetness.

I made this tonight, and my wife and I sampled a slice just now. It came out great, very chewy and delicious! Thanks so much for sharing this recipe!