Allrecipes.com Irresistible Irish Soda Bread

*This bread is recommended to sit over night before serving.

Here is my next St. Patrick's Day recipe that I tried. It was this delicious Irish soda bread that was super tender and almost cake-like in consistency. It comes together like a banana bread, in that you don't add yeast and knead the dough, let it raise, blah, blah, blah. You just whip up the batter, pour it into the pan, and away you go. Because of that, if you start thinking "banana bread" then you need to know that this is more of a savory bread that I felt went really well with the Irish potato soup recipe (although, not for dunking in the soup because it was to tender for that). It also has a savory taste because it uses buttermilk.

Really yummy and super good paired with the soup. I think we will be making this next Saint Patrick's Day! Again, I am not sure what makes this bread "Irish", but it was delicious!

Here is the link to the original recipe, but I am going to post it below too:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/irresistible-irish-soda-bread/detail.aspx

They also have a video to show you how to make it here:

http://allrecipes.com/video/1066/irresistible-irish-soda-bread/detail.aspx?prop24=RD_VideoTipsTricks

Irresistible Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbl. baking powder
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 cups butter milk (1 pint + 1/4 cup)
• 1/4 cups butter, melted

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
• Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and baking soda. Blend egg and buttermilk together, and add all at once to the flour mixture. Mix just until moistened. Stir in butter. Pour into prepared pan.
• Bake for 65 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the bread comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Wrap in foil for several hours, or overnight, for best flavor.

* I tried to put the batter in one of my glass loaf pans the first time and I could see that it was going to raise and spill over the pan, making a mess in my oven. So I switched to my larger dark loaf pans and it worked out perfectly! I also bought a pint of buttermilk at the store, thinking it looked like 2 cups worth, but in the end it was 1/4 cup short. I just added 1/4 cup regular milk to the buttermilk to make up the difference and it turned out just great.