Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for the pan and top of the loaf
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into half-inch pieces
1/2 cup dried currants (optional)
1 tsp caraway seeds (optional)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk, as needed
Directions:
--Diane Rossen Worthington, Irish soda bread, Baltimore Sun, Tribune Content Agency, March 12, 2014. Worthington got the recipe from Karen Mitchell and Sarah Mitchell Hansen's The Model Bakery Cookbook, 2013. According to Worthington, the cookbook authors suggested adding baking powder as well as baking soda. Baking powder will cause the bread to rise better. However, Irish soda bread is called "soda" bread because it doesn't traditionally use any baking powder. The baking soda is supposed to make it rise.
I have baked Irish soda bread for Saint Patrick's Day celebrations many years ago. In the 1990's sometime, Irish soda bread began to commonly appear on the shelves of many grocery stores. I do love soda bread. Thus, I have since served it both for March Equinox and for a wee bit luck in March. Though my mother never baked soda bread, she frequently served corn beef and cabbage on March 17...all the while insisting that we were not Irish.
Much later, an uncle (my mother's older brother) told me that we did have some Irish in the family--apparently a Great Aunt on my maternal Grandfather's side. He seemed to think my mother's annual pronouncement "Why shouldn't we celebrate St. Paddy's Day even if we're not Irish!?! We celebrate Chinese New Year and we're not Chinese!" was strangely amusing in light of our genuine family history.
Family quirks aside, I've noticed that every few years March 17 falls on a weekend. In Neo-Pagan practice, the holidays are often celebrated on the weekend closest to the event on the calendar. Thus, we have sometimes been celebrating March Equinox on the same weekend as the USA obsession of the Wearing o' the Green. For me this a perfect reason to celebrate a Green Spring Equinox. The first shoots of green are often just becoming readily evident around March 17th. In fact--as a kid--since my mom firmly insisted we weren't Irish I assumed we were really wearing green to "Green Up the Earth" for Spring in Maryland. I might have been about age 8 when I came up with this notion. (Eight year old logic, don't you love it?)
Though this isn't the recipe I originally used, it seems similar to what I baked years ago.
March 12, 2014, Myth Woodling
Saint Patrick's Weekends
Saturday, March 17, 1990
Friday, March 17, 1995
Sunday, March 17, 1997
Friday, March 17, 2006
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Practical Celebration Recipies and Preps
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