Everywhere I've turned on the Internet in the last week, I've seen Irish soda bread recipes. It appears that it's the Irish-related recipe of choice among bloggers. Oh, there are some drink recipes and some corned beef recipes and cupcakes with stout and Irish whiskey but a lot of people seem to be going with the soda bread. Soda bread was the " kinda sorta related to Ireland" idea I came up with for a post on St. Patrick's Day too, so I can relate. But before I go any further, let me tell you a story.....
Gordon came to Seoul a few months before the Geezler and I did. His job was to make sure everything was in place so that the Geezler had a simple transition. A few weeks after he arrived, he called to let me know that he'd seen the apartment we would be moving into. A classic good news/ bad news phone call ensued.
Gordon (good news): It's got a great view.
Me: Great!
Gordon (bad news): It's on the 29th floor.
Me: You're kidding right. Please tell me you're kidding!
(Let me take a moment to explain that heights make me, um, twitchy; you might even describe it as slightly anxious. I tend to hold really tightly to my child's hand if a fall of more than about 6 feet is in any way possible and mumble things like "Don't go too close to the edge" or "There should be a bigger guard rail.")
Gordon (good news): It's got a gas stove top.
Me: Well, that's great. We like cooking with gas.
Gordon: (bad news): There's no oven.
Me:
Just nothing. What could I say? I'm a baker. It's one of my hobbies, I guess. I bake at least once a week. Could be cake, pie, muffins, cookies, bread, biscuits, whatever I can make from a batter or a dough. The thought of spending a year and a half without an oven had taken my breath away.
While I was regaining my composure, Gordon was babbling on about how it wouldn't be so bad, there were lots of bakeries near the apartment and we could get a toaster oven and, and, and.... Eventually I got over the shock and decided that if everybody else could get along without an oven, I could too. I lasted almost a whole month. I could survive easily without the desserts, even without my morning muffin. It was the bread that broke me. We did manage to find a bakery that makes a decent baguette but whole grain breads haven't been easy to find. So we bought a toaster oven.
And that leads us back to that lovely loaf of Irish Soda Bread. I have a couple of yeast bread recipes I use when I've planned ahead for a baking session but the great part about soda bread is that it's so fast and simple. It can be mixed up in about the same amount of time as a batch of muffins and it makes great toast. I use this recipe from the Canadian Living website. The loaf in the picture above is the Honey Apricot version. After it's cooled, I slice up and store it in the freezer because I've read that soda breads go stale quickly.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
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