Baking Irish Soda Bread

Project Discipline: Baking
​Ages: All ages!!
Difficulty level: Medium (Cloverbuds will need help)
Supplies needed: Flour, salt, baking soda, milk, vinegar. Measuring cups, bowl, spoon for stirring. Oven  ​

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Irish Soda Bread is a versatile bread; you can sweeten it with sugar and fruit or leave it as is for a delicious savory bread. ​

Irish soda bread, along with corned beef and hash, is well known around St. Patrick's Day.  Find out more about its history here. 

​Some 4-Her's are said to "bleed green".  Let's join in the celebration of St. Patrick's Day and Bake some Irish Soda Bread together!

Step 1: Gather Your Ingredients & Materials
You will need: 
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vinegar
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

(Full recipe we used was found on allrecipes). 
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We used the recipe we did because we didn't have buttermilk.  For a traditional recipe, try out Kodiak 4-H Breads Leader's recipe below:

Step 2: Make Your "Buttermilk"!

Add vinegar to milk in a small bowl, and let sit for at least 10 minutes.  

Step 3: Mix Other Ingredients and Get Oven Ready!
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix together flour, salt & baking soda.
For a quick tutorial on how to measure flour, try this video!

Step 4: Combine Ingredients
Once your time is up on the buttermilk, add gradually to the rest of the mix until you can turn out onto a floured surface and form it into a ball. 
Note: Dough may be somewhat sticky - it's a great time for taste testing on fingers! 

Step 5: Knead dough and bake!
The directions say to knead a few times to form ball but we actually forgot to knead our dough (learn by doing, right!?), so we plopped it right into the cast iron skillet (you could use a cake pan if you don't have the pan!).

The directions were to bake for 20 minutes, but ours took 30.  If you want the traditional look of Irish Soda Bread, don't forget to cut some cross marks in the top before putting it in the oven.

Step 6: Enjoy!!
We added some butter to our freshly baked bread and I'll have to say, it was pretty delicious.  Here's what was left after we each had a slice!



For more 4-H baking Ideas, try out some of these sites:

https://www.uidaho.edu/extension/4h/projects/baking
https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/4h/Curriculum/EC111.pdf
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