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Irish Soda Bread

Print Recipe
Course Baked Goods, Side Dish, Snack
Keyword Family Favorite
Author Marie Cooney

Ingredients

  • 2 cups milk and 2 tbsp white vinegar, let sit or 2 cups of buttermilk
  • 1 egg beaten
  • 1 stick melted butter
  • 4 cups flour white, wheat, or mixed
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 2 tbsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • t tbsp caraway seeds
  • 1¼ cups raisins (half a box) brown or mix brown and golden

Instructions

Prep

  • Preheat oven at 350°.
  • Butter and flour one large cast iron pan or two loaf pans. (See traditional or modern below.)
  • Flour counter area for kneading.

Mix

  • Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.
  • Mix wet ingredients in another bowl.
  • Pour boiling water over raisins to soften and make plum, them mix with dry ingredients.
  • Add wet ingredients and mix all with large wooden spoon.
  • Place on floured counter and complete mixing by hand if necessary. Do not over knead.

Traditional

  • Cook in cast iron pan. Halfway through cooking, add an X about an inch deep. (This will aid in cooking more evenly at the center. It is also symbolic of the old Celtic religion, where the cross is an even X. Or symbolic of the Christian cross, which is extended to a t.)

Modern

  • Cook in two loaf pans or one Bundt pan.

Cook

  • Cook 40-45 minutes.
  • Check with toothpick to see if cooked through in the middle. Cast iron pan will take longer, because it takes longer to heat up.

Serve

  • Serve hot with butter.
  • Later on, it is also excellent toasted and with tea.

Notes

Favorite Memory: My grandmother, Mary Finnegan McGee, (originally from Cavantown in Cavan, Ireland) always made Irish Soda Bread in a large cast iron pan. One of my favorite memories is in NYC, when my Mom kept taking each ingredient from my grandmother and kept trying to measure everything.
My grandmother was a second cook to the widow of a doctor, who went down with the Titanic. Mamie, as we called my grandmother, scolded my mother, saying it was always different, depending on the heat and humidity of the day. Mamie never measured anything! "Please, Mom," my mother pleaded, "I want to be able to make your bread, when you are gone." Mamie teased my mother, but she also let my Mom get the basic ingredients and measurements written down. Mamie would often add a little of this or that, due to the feel of the bread or the humidity and heat of the day or in the kitchen. No two loaves were ever made the same, but they were always delicious.
This is the recipe, more or less. Adapt it if you like. Some places make it plain. We always had it with caraway seeds and raisins. Different flour would also be used depending on desired results, locations, and traditions throughout Ireland. My mom mostly used white.