#soda bread

This is a recipe I've adapted from various soda breads to make it as easy as possible when I'm dealing with high fatigue, low spoons, and/or no appetite. It has the appeal of warm, soft fresh bread, but the oats make it a bit more substantial.

You will need: Oven (not a microwave) Mixing bowl Spoon Cup or 1/2 cup measure (or something of similar size) Baking tray

Ingredients: 1/2 cup whole oats (not instant) 1/2 cup self-raising flour (or plain flour + 1/2 tsp baking powder) 1/2 cup whole milk A pinch of salt

Instructions: Literally just mix everything together in a bowl, then dump it onto a baking tray in a rough approximation of a round bread roll. Bake at 180C for 15-18 minutes. Allow to cool and eat with whatever you would normally have with fresh bread.

Notes: It doesn't matter exactly how big your measuring cup is as long as the three main ingredients are equal, but you'll need to extend cooking time for a larger piece of bread (or divide into two).

When you've mixed your ingredients you should get something like thick porridge, NOT like dough. If you make a dough you can shape with your hands, it'll come out too dry. This stuff should be sticky and blobby, thick enough that it holds its shape on the baking tray. You should be able to spoon it out and mash it together to make a rather un-aesthetic mound.

If it's too thin, wait a couple of minutes for the oats to absorb the milk. If it's still too thin, add a bit more flour.

I like to mix in some grated cheese to make something a bit like a cheese scone. You could also lean more into sweet flavours to make a muffin-like end result (particularly if you spoon it into cases).

This does NOT keep well, it goes stale very quickly. It's a bake-and-eat thing. I don't know if it freezes.

I haven't tried making it with non-dairy milk. The milk is providing both liquid and fat so you'd want to make sure you were using something that HAS a good amount of fat.

irish soda bread scones with butter, jam, and salt F2U with source

Found in an Irish group on Facebook.

One for St Patrick’s Day, also a recipe for any day when you don’t have any bread and want some really soon.

Best eaten with a generous spread of salted butter, Irish if you can get it (Dylan doesn’t do this, he has a thinness to maintain) or used to chase the last toothsome dregs of Irish Stew, Dublin Coddle, Strong Farmer’s Soup - or indeed stuff from outside Ireland such as chilli, goulash, Sauerbraten and any other tasty savoury thing whose last toothsome dregs need chased...

It makes washing the plates so much easier. ;->

Normally at this point I’d link to my Mum’s 4-or-maybe-5-generation-old recipe on European Cuisines, but the site’s not back up yet.

Instead this link goes to Sotsil’s Wordpress page, which not only gives full credit (Yay!) but adds some fun extra observations, including various ways to improvise buttermilk if you can’t find the real thing.

Here it is.

Here’s a pic of the last time we made it:

That photo, Dylan’s video and Sotsil’s page all show the oven-baked “cake” version more associated with the South. The North, where I come from, uses the same ingredients and method, but cooks with a skillet / griddle on the stovetop.

That version looks like this:

Here it is with the traditional “wee cup of tea”.

Remember how I said something about butter? Jam, too.

Either warm from the griddle or after being split and toasted, the butter does A Trick, and melts down into the bread. This was the way my Dad liked it.

The melted butter of course makes room for more butter, if you like butter (Dad did) though biting into it after that can be an adventure.