High-rise Soda Bread

Like many others I have tried my hand at Irish soda bread from time to time.  I've never been happy with the results. The loaf has usually been flat, dry, crumbly, more scone-like.  Usually I have baked the loaves free-standing, a few times in an open skillet, and I usually have used baking powder instead of baking soda because it's more tolerant and why not?

I've read up on the history of Irish soda bread, and I even received a bag of King Arthur's Irish-style Whole Wheat flour for Christmas.

Then I found this story by Stella Parks on Serious Eats that has changed everything -

https://www.seriouseats.com/real-irish-soda-bread-recipe

Digging deeply into how people actually made soda bread in the 19th century, she learned three things that make an enormous difference:

1. The dough should be *very* soft - as soft as can possibly be handled;

2. The dough needs to be alkaline, not acidic.  So you need enough baking soda to neutralize the buttermilk's acidity (baking powder is fairly neutral and won't do that).

3. The bread was mostly baked in an iron pot with short legs and a cover, set over coals and with coals heaped on top.  IOW, a Dutch Oven. Even when baked in a skillet, the skillet would have been covered.

Ms Parks tried it out, and she says the results were a revelation.  No more crumbly, dry bread with little taste.   To quote her,

Before digging in, I let the soda bread cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes, a completely arbitrary time determined strictly by my own impatience. The sound of it was glorious, accompanied by a shower of crispy shards that flew out with every pass of the blade until my knife sank into a pillow crumb that gave way as cleanly as any sandwich loaf.

My first slice was without butter or salt, yet it tasted moist and rich, with an aroma something like that of a bakery-style pretzel—mild, but distinct. My second, third, fourth, and fifth slices were consumed in a blur of butter and honey

So I tried it and got pretty much the same result.  That was with white AP flour.  Then I made a loaf with 50% Irish-style WW, and that was wonderful too.  Both these loaves were rather flat because my dutch oven is too big across to provide any real containment.

For today's bake, I used a smaller, ceramic pot (2.5 qt) to contain the dough, and I added some baking powder to get more lift.  Wow! Look at that lift!

Here's what the loaf looked like before slicing:

high_soda_bread-1.jpg

high_soda_bread-2.jpg

 Today I'm a happy camper!

TomP