Mandy's Bytes: The Luck 'o' the Irish Soda Bread

So feeling in the St. Patty's Day spirit this week I wanted to pay homage to my Irish heritage, and also to the fact that I was out of yeast..., but mostly the Irish thing. So I decided to make some Irish Soda Bread (now you see where the yeast part comes in, haha), and I found this simple recipe online:

• 4 cups flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tbsp baking soda
• 1½ cups water
• 2 tsp vinegar (cider or white)

This recipe was incredibly easy, just a straight forward, mix all the dry stuff, add all the wet stuff kind of recipe. First you want to preheat the oven to 400 degrees, then we'll get to all the mixing. Of course I wasn't going to pass up the chance to use my Kitchenaid  mixer, and accompanying dough hook, so I measured out the flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda into the mixer bowl.

Next we'll add in the water and vinegar to the mixer bowl.

Now you just go ahead and put the mixer on a low setting and mix the dough until it comes away from the sides of the bowl. Then just make sure that all the extra dry mix gets picked up from the bottom of the bowl.

Be sure to flour your hands before touching the dough, because it will be extremely sticky. I man-handled the dough into a well floured loaf pan, the original recipe calls for making a round loaf if you prefer.

When it came out of the oven after about 35 minutes it had a nice golden brown crust, which I immediately slathered with butter and garlic, resulting in a very delicious looking final product.

After digging in my only suggestion to those making this recipe would be to add at least a teaspoon of salt in with the dry ingredients because it was a little bland. Otherwise is was quite tasty, and a fabulous way to celebrate the holiday.