Soda bread advice
I made the recipe below a couple of days ago and the flavour is fantastic! I don’t know whether I’d ever eaten soda bread made with wholewheat flour, but the result was very dense and heavy. Fortunately, I like heavy, dense bread and we ate it all. However, my loaf didn’t rise as completely as I would have liked, and even after 10-15 minutes additional cooking time was a little doughy in the centre, and not all that heavily browned, so perhaps I could have left it a bit longer yet. I don’t have an oven thermometer, but as far as I know my oven is a little on the hot side, if anything. The pan was on the middle shelf.
I followed the recipe and method to the letter. Here are the things I’m wondering about -
- I am at about 3,000 ft altitude, but don’t usually have to alter recipes made with soda.
- The dough was a bit on the wet and sticky side, but I was able to shape it into a loaf and it held its shape. Could it have been too wet?
- I know you can’t hang about once you combine the wet and dry ingredients. Because the dough was so sticky I perhaps spent 5 minutes or so from combining ingredients to putting in oven. Is that reasonable?
- the yogurt I used has a rather mild or bland taste. Perhaps it wasn’t acidic enough?
- re-reading the recipe, I see that I probably made my loaf thicker (and hence smaller in diameter) than intended, so maybe that was it??
I’d love any trouble shooting on offer, as I’m already hankering after another loaf, in spite of my only partial success! Thanks!
Kris
Ingredients
250g all purpose flour (~2 cups)
250g whole wheat flour (~2 cups)
100g oats (~1 cup)
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
25g butter, cut in pieces (~2 Tbsp)
1 c milk
1 c plain yoghurt
Directions
Preheat the oven to 400F and spray a lined baking sheet with pan spray.
Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then rub in the butter with your fingers.
Mix in the milk and yogurt mix by hand, being gentle as you handle it (you don’t want to over knead it). Turn it onto a floured surfaced and shape it into a flat, round loaf about 1-1/2″ thick.
Transfer to the baking sheet and score a deep cross in the top. Bake for 30-35 minutes until browned and the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.
Let cool on a rack before serving.