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Crasins? Dried cranberries. More tart than raisins/grapes.
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So, should it be cranberries or raisins?
I am a soda bread originalist.
Raisins.
Also caraway seeds instead of the sunflower variety.
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This is how my mom taught me to make it. I haven’t made a loaf in a long time, I might have to this week.
I’ll leave out the caraway seeds, they’re not my favorite.
Cast iron skillets are the best. I have one that belonged to my grandparents, though I’m not sure exactly how old it is. Possibly as old as my mom, certainly older than me. Met half way, that would make it roughly 63.
Also, anyone who doesn’t make cornbread from scratch and bake it in a cast iron skillet hates America and should be sent back to mother Russia.
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While that recipe definitely looks tasty. It does not look like proper brown bread. And brown bread is soda bread. White soda bread, or soda bread with fruit and seeds has some history in Ireland, but these days it’s almost unheard of. And the sweet, dense loaves you find in the US bear little resemblance to any form of soda bread.
As for this recipe? Bread flour is a bad choice, Irish flour on the whole is softer (less protein) than US flour. Bread flour (which has loads of protein) Will give you a dense, doughy loaf. AP flour is fine, if a little too protein heavy. Cake/pastry flour is lighter on protein than Irish flours but it’ll work too.
The wheat germ is there to mimic Irish extra coarse whole meal flour. Which has the whole germ and big craggy pieces of bran in it. Adding some wheat germ and coarse bran to American whole wheat gets you a bit closer to the real deal. But whole wheat flour will do on its own. I get Odlum’s Whole Meal at an Irish market not to far away. It’s nowhere close to American whole wheat with the additions, so I find it to be wasted effort if I don’t have the real stuff. So without Odlum’s I stick to American whole wheat just as it is. King Arthur also makes an Irish style coarse whole meal in the US. But innitially they used a strong wheat by mistake. They’ve corrected the mistake but I haven’t tried the new version. Fat or butter additions are intended to block the formation of gluten, mimicking Irish flour with stronger American. But this recipe involves bread flour and kneading. Which produce gluten, defeating the purpose.
And soda bread generally should not contain sugar. Though I’ll cop to adding a bit of brown sugar sometimes, ads a nice flavor.
To get the real thing the recipe should contain only flour, salt, baking soda, butter milk. With an appropriately light dough, no added baking powder or yeast should be neccisary. The most traditional additions would be a small amount of rolled oats, And in some very narrow places carroway seeds (I grew up with both). The dough should be mixed minimally. And should not be kneaded at all if it can be avoided. The whole idea is to minimize gluten. Just enough to hold it together as bread.
I’ll try to find the two recipes I’ve been using lately when I get home. One is rigidly hardcore. The other is Americanized with small amounts of butter and sugar, they do give a nice flavor. And help compensate for American AP flour when making a mixed loaf rather than all white or all wheat.
Eta: come to think of it wheat loaves with lots of fruits and seeds do have some popularity in Ireland these days. But from what I understand it’s more of a health food trend than anything. And they aren’t considered the same thing, or usual sort of brown or soda bread. My one cousin sold a bread not unlike this in a bakery over there, And some of us still make it. It was sold as “healthful wheaten bread” and was a separate product from their brown bread.
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I can not for the life of me find the hardcore traditionalist recipe I use, though it came from some UK or Irish newspaper where a prominent Irish chef was explaining the history of the stuff and promoting the return of the white loaf. And a lot of the better old school recipes I run into these days are for white. Either because Americans think of soda bread as white. Or because Irish food promoters want to bring it back and counter the American style psuedo-cake.
So I’ll just throw out Stella parks recipe:
Most of the good ones look almost exactly like this, but serious eats gives better technical instruction.
For brown you just swap half or all the flour for whole meal. Nearly any good soda bread recipe can be converted that way. You can usually add a tablespoon of caraway seeds or up to 2 tablespoons of rolled oats without adjustment. The oats taste nice and leave the bread a little more crumbly
If I want sweet cakey bread we make president Kennedy bread. It’s so extracted from the source as to be unrecognizable as soda bread. But because of that it misses the dense and dry problem that plagues most Americanized loaves.
http://www.cooks.com/recipe/r60b45j1/president-kennedys-irish-bread.html
We typically use dates over raisins and skip the nuts.
I’ll edit later with the family’s favorite sorta bastardized recipe later. It’s from some small town Hibernian society community cook book from the 60s. So it’s not linkable.
ETA:
Recipe. Its got both sugar and butter. Neither of which are really proper. But both help to compensate for the American flour. The butter limits gluten production, and the sugar traps water helping keep the bread from getting too dry. I usually use brown sugar when I make this version, cause if I’m adding sugar I’d like it to bring some flavor to the table. The milk brushed on top helps keep the top crust from getting leathery. A problem that comes with too much gluten. I usually just use whatever residual buttermilk is clinging to the measuring cup. Though I’ve gotten some nice results with adding some melted butter. I usually make this with the Irish whole meal and American AP. Works fine. Also works fine with American whole wheat, you just get a smoother loaf that’s a little less “wheaty” in flavor. which is why some recipes use wheat germ. You can toss in a table spoon, in place of or along with the oats. But you might need more moisture. Dough needs to be really shaggy and wet. Like can’t touch it without well floured hands wet (but not a batter).
I’ve found that cooking in preheated cast iron or on a baking stone the bottom will burn. Probably because of the sugar. So I usually go for 425f, check it at 30 minutes, then every 10 minutes after that until its done.
This is the version I grew up eating. Though my grandmother was also a big fan of various Irish mixes, basically the Irish equivalent of self rising flour. Flour, soda, and salt premixed to the appropriate ratio. Dump in some buttermilk, mix briefly and bake. Used to be the only way we could get the right flour.
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Well duh. I will carve out a specific exception for people that make cornbread in one of those cast iron pans that have little sections shaped like corn. I will roll my eyes, but still find it acceptable.
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Sorry to bust the bubble of any professed puritans or originalists but there’s soda bread and there is everything else, and I might have missed it but I haven’t seen one recipe on here that’s an actual, authentic soda bread recipe. Nor is my own family’s “soda bread” (from Cratloe, County Clare) the genuine article; it is in fact closer to a tea cake. Soda bread and brown bread are not the same thing. I defer all things soda bread to the following website, rich in soda bread research, lore and mythos:
The Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread
I think you are all trying to make damper.
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1st did you not catch me posting a recipe that’s nearly identical to the one from the site you link to. Save for a higher hydration and a more modern technical recipe?
2nd brown and white soda bread are 2 forms of the same thing. That have both been made for as long as chemically leavened breads have been made in Ireland. The difference is down to access to white flour. If you had it you made white, if you didn’t you made brown. The story goes that white bread was often relegated to special occasions. With brown for every day. But sufficed to say both are referred to as soda bread. But white soda bread has been fairly uncommon (baring regional preference) in much of Ireland for around a century. None of my family members, including my grandfather (born 1921 in Offaly) or his siblings (born earlier oldest sibling ~1900) ever saw white soda bread. None of my extensive family over there would acknowledge white soda bread as anything but an American bastardization until recent heritage food movements started to re-popularize it. I would imagine if you’re in one of those bits of Ireland where white soda bread remained a thing that soda bread might by default refer to the white. Though I doubt Claire is one of those. I’ve never been there so I couldn’t tell you for sure. Farls, which are mostly a Northern thing. Do seem to be white more often than soda bread down South.
In much of Ireland if you say “soda bread” it means brown bread. Though terminology varies regionally. Most people I know call it brown bread. But Wheaten bread is another name. And the term “soda bread” seem generally unused in most of the bits of Ireland I’m familiar with. I’ve known many Irish people to come over here. Get served American soda bread. And lead with “why is it white” before bitching about the fruit and sweetness.
And yes many American versions are closer to certain tea cakes (so far as I know that’s a category not a single dish). But they are said to descend from special occasion versions of various breads made in Ireland. Particularly for Sundays and major church holidays (especially Christmas and Easter) where you’d toss some sugar, dried fruits, or nuts in the soda bread to make it special.
More direct antecedents were Barmbrack and Scones, American Soda breads much more closely resemble those. And may be derived from them as much as from actual soda bread.
In fact if you like that Americanized soda bread. And would like something that is. Well, just better executed. I’d recommend making some scones. Pretty much the same flavor. But less leaden and dry.
Frankly if you’re going to be this pedantic about it. You can’t even make the “real deal” by that definition without tracking down real butter milk. The stuff you get in the store is basically very thin non-fat yogurt. It does not come from making butter. Real buttermilk is hard to find without actually making cultured butter (buttermilk from sweet cream butter isn’t acidic enough to leaven baked goods).
That does look really similar. And given the way most of Australia’s early white population got there. Well I’d say there’s a connection. Damper looks like its closer to traditional basic soda bread than most of the American versions.
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I think you might be onto something 
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Every time I encounter the word ‘skillet’, I hear this in my head:
“The bread keeps for several days and re-heats well”
Lies. LIES, I tell you! It evaporates away completely within 3 hours, less if you accidentally leave butter or jam anywhere near it.
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Try increasing your fluid intake, and eating more fibre. Perhaps supplement it with some prune juice. It’s worth sorting it out early because it will really mess you up, long term.
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not sure if soda helps in this case, though
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Good thing we just got our CSA box.
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I believe that’s “pinch a loaf.”
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