American Soda Bread is not Barmbrack. And neither is it derived from it. Its more soda bread that’s failed its way upwards to an erstatz Barmbrack. Barmbrack is yeasted, sweetened and always has dried fruit. And its more of a tea cake than it is a bread.
American soda bread has two things going on. One the Irish always snuck sugar and dried fruits into soda bread if they could afford it on special occasions and as a treat. Sort of the way you’re mom might sneak chocolate chips into your pancakes on your birthday. Those things tended to get a different name though. And two our flour in the US has too much protein, and our whole wheat flour has too little in the way of course bran chunkies. So between attempting to make our flours work for the bread. Need to add fat to limit gluten production as an example. And the better access to things like sugar and fruits. We’ve arrived at a weird situation where American soda bread bears no resemblance to its source, and is barely edible.
A visiting family member recently asked me “what the fuck was with that weird bread? It was like a shitty tea cake”
Is it brown. I might get to yelling if its not brown.
