Experiments with Bread: Soda Bread

Another experiment in bread this week and this time with soda bread. I thought it would be good to try a yeast less bread and googled some recipes a while ago. I found a recipe for white soda bread on the River Cottage website and when I tried to find it again came across this one instead and as I had some wholemeal self-raising flour in the cupboard I decided to go for it. 

Ingredients:

500g wholemeal self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
10g salt
1 tbsp each linseeds, sunflower, pumpkin, sesame and poppy seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
300ml buttermilk, or milk, or 50:50 milk and yogurt

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Tip the dry ingredients into a bowl and whisk together to blend. Make a well in the middle and pour in the buttermilk, stirring with a wooden spoon to combine, then knead briefly on a lightly floured surface until you have a smooth dough. Divide into two, then shape into rough rounds. Pat them down to about 5cm high, flour all over and lay on a baking tray.

Cut a cross in the top of each dough round, almost down to the bottom. Bake for about 20 minutes, and leave to cool for a few minutes on a wire rack before eating.

I didn't have six seeds but I did have some so made it with sunflower seeds, sesame and linseeds too. I made my own butter milk by adding lime juice to the milk, mixed it in with the dry ingredients and was disappointed to find that it made a very dry dough that I couldn't get to stick together. I added some more milk, I reckon about 100ml after which I managed to get it to stick together. 

I followed the rest of the instructions by making the two rounds about 5cm in height and then cutting them nearly to the bottom before putting them in the oven. When they came out they looked fantastic and Mr VST and I tried a warm slice each with butter. Despite the heaviness of the loaves the bread itself was lovely and light. It had a nice soft texture too and was delicious warm with a bit of butter.

Unfortunately when it came to cutting further slices it was clear that it hadn't cooked at all in the middle and was still doughy. I tried to rescue it by putting it back into the oven but it didn't really work as I had discovered the doughy centres too late. The edges were yummy this morning toasted and piled high with last summer's berries and cherries jam though. 

Having gone back and looked at the original recipe I found that it calls for 400ml of buttermilk plus a bit of milk if necessary and it is baked at the same temperature for 40 minutes rather than 20. I will definitely be giving this loaf another try.