irish brown soda bread

Yesterday I found a recipe for this in a magazine at a friend's house and copied it down. I love to bake and haven't done any bread baking for a while. The recipe seemed deceptively simple and I thought I would treat my family to fresh baked bread with dinner (this is a catch-up post). Whole wheat flour, white flour, salt, baking soda and buttermilk. How hard can that be. Apparently more difficult than I thought.

The first batch I followed the directions which said to mix ALL dry ingredients together, make a well and add in the buttermilk. Somehow it was too much flour and not enough liquid. It wouldn't adhere together and trying to add liquid simply created old-fashioned wallpaper paste.

Into the trash.

The second batch I did 2/3 of the flour and then added flour as need until the dough was no longer sticky. Now the recipe called for what seemed like a lot of salt (2 teaspoons) plus 1 teaspoon of baking soda which can have a salty effect. But I really do try to follow recipes exactly when I first make them before I start fidgeting around with them. I should have followed my instincts and halved the salt. It came out *really* salty. So salty that no one wanted to eat it, even fresh out of the oven with butter on it.

Into the trash.



I guess this was not a day to bake bread. Perhaps I'll try again and manipulate the recipe my way and see how it comes out. Brown soda bread does sound yummy.