Homemade Soda Bread

a bread recipe that doesn't need yeast

My guess is even the most novice of cooks might’ve tried bread baking during this last year. Sourdough was all the rage as yeast shortages hit hard. By the way, if you bought yeast last year and it’s been sitting in your cupboards all this time be sure to test it before using to make sure it’s still active.

To test yeast, mix the amount needed for your recipe with a little barely hot water and few pinches of sugar. If it doesn’t start blooming within 10 minutes, then toss the yeast and buy some fresh packets when you’re ready to bake bread again.

Or maybe skip the yeast all together since there’s more than one way to get a loaf of bread to rise. This time of year Irish Soda Bread is readily available at bakeries but you can easily make it at home, and in my opinion it might be even better than what you can buy.

What we make, bake and sell here in the U.S. is a far cry from real soda bread (Irish brown bread, actually). I’m not Irish and have never even visited Ireland but I’ve had enough Irish friends tell me this (read: complain about it) for years.

The magic of the leavening is probably the only common thread between traditional brown bread and what we think of as Irish soda bread. That leavening comes from baking soda, classifying it as a quick bread since there’s no rising time needed, as with yeast-based breads.

There’s also usually no sweetener in Irish brown bread. Yep, that’s right—no sugar, no molasses, no honey. My feeling is it’s fine if you want to add some sweetener to accommodate your own palate, after all, isn’t that a big benefit to cooking from scratch? The problem is when people complain soda bread recipes aren’t sweet enough or are too dense. When I see these comments in recipes online my guess is those folks didn’t understand what they were signing up to bake.

In fact, I had to develop a soda bread recipe for work recently, and the amount of sugar added to get the recipe through the test kitchen taste challenges left me feeling it was more a scone in taste than a traditional soda bread. Customer comments prove time and again that Americans have a real sweet tooth, so in the end, I think the added sugar will result in a more successful recipe in terms of people’s taste expectations even if they fall short in the authenticity department.

I’ve learned there are some things you just need to make peace with, and a soda bread recipe wasn’t the hill worth dying on. Here though, I can do what I want, and that means cooker closer to my principles, philosophies and palate.

All of my soda bread recipes have a tiny bit of sweetener, ranging from 1 teaspoon sugar to 1 tablespoon honey. You can leave them out or increase them slightly, depending on your own taste.

Soda bread, in my opinion, is best with jam and butter, or with a hearty stew or soup, but you can also use it as you would regular bread to make a sandwich—just remember it’s a different kind of bread. Not crusty like a baguette, not squidgy like sandwich bread. It’s a great bread to bake when you want a homemade loaf but not in the mood for all the kneading, shaping and rising required of yeasted bread.

You can find my soda bread recipes here, here, here and here.