Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Irish Soda Bread Recipe

Written By: Maggie Karl (Manager Contract Manufacture)

Annual DUKAL St. Patty's Day Lunch

 Yesterday Gerry treated his Irish and Irish food loving employees to a traditional feast of Corned Beef and Cabbage, so I thought I would treat our blog readers to my Irish Soda Bread Recipe!

We lovingly refer to this as our “Irish Soda Brick” because it’s a very heavy bread, a sweet and dense treat that’s delicious straight from the oven or toasted with your morning coffee.

Maggie’s Irish Soda Bread   

3 cups All Purpose Flour
1 cup Bread Flour*
1 cup Granulated White Sugar Zest of 1 Large Lemon**
1 Tbsp Baking Powder

3 Large Eggs
1 cup Milk***
¼ cup Buttermilk

1 cup Raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour a standard loaf pan.

Combine dry ingredients and lemon zest in a large bowl.
Lightly beat 3 eggs, add milk and buttermilk, then mix in dry ingredients until just combined.  Mixture will be thick, but if it looks too dry add another splash of buttermilk.
Stir in raisins, then pour mixture into greased and floured pan.  Bake for 65-75 minutes, or until the bread sounds hollow when knocked on. 

Notes:
*This was the first year I used bread flour and I really liked the texture.  This bread was still dense but was slightly spongier than the other loafs I made with 4 cups of all purpose flour.  That being said, you can certainly use all non-purpose flour if you don’t happen to have bread flour on hand.

**The more lemon zest the better.  You can add some orange zest if you like, too.

***We only ever have 1% milk in our house, so that’s what I use, but any percent will work.  You could also use all buttermilk, or all regular milk, as long as the total volume of wet ingredients remains the same.