wheaten bread

And the third one, and I promise the last one for today, although I have another in the fridge, I won't bake it until tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

Leaving in Ireland, now in Northern Ireland, soda bread is a big thing. Lidia and myself were talking a couple of days ago about the soda bread. She told me she wanted to bake one and I didn't do it for ages. So in this day of bread baking madness, I decided to bake a soda bread. In this case I made one call wheaten bread, very popular at least here in the north, basically a wholemeal soda bread, although some people say there is another thing.

Soda or wheaten breads are very easy to make, you don't need to knead them just mix the ingredients and not for a long time: the less the better, so one or two minutes will be more than enough, just to be sure than all the ingredients are mix properly. The basics ingredients apart of the flour are the butter, milk or buttermilk, bicarbonate of soda or baking soda. Salt or sugar and other ingredient depend of the bread baker.

This is the recipe I used today:

140g strong white flour

350g strong wholemeal flour

6g bicarbonate of soda

5g salt

10g caster sugar

500ml buttermilk

20g wheat bran

4 tbs sunflower oil

60g butter

Mix all ingredient in a bowl for about 1-2 min, place it in a long oven (it can be place as well directly into the baking tray, with a roundy shape) and bake for 50 minutes at 180 degrees. Easy job for a lovely bread.

Ideal with butter and your tea, with a soup or with smoked salmon.

Note about bicarbonate of soda-baking soda-baking powder

I read in many recipes that soda or wheaten bread has to be make with bicarbonate of soda and not baking powder. Bicarbonate of soda is the same that baking soda. this one is a raising agent that release carbon dioxide helping the dough to rise. But it needs some acidic component to induce the reaction, like buttermilk, lemon, vinegar, cream of tartar, etc. In the other hand, baking powder is normally a mix of baking soda and that acidic component, so there is no need to add in the recipe. So thats why soda or wheaten bread don't need baking powder because of the buttermilk in this case.