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Irish soda bread is made, as the name suggests, with bicarbonate of soda (also known as sodium bicarbonate). The soda acts as a leavening agent so you don’t need to add any yeast. It doesn’t need to be kneaded really either, so it’s very quick and easy to make. This recipe is for speckled white soda loaf from Country Bread by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake. It’s a bit more special than your average Irish soda bread because it has pieces of dark chocolate added!

For this recipe, you could use self-raising flour and leave out the bicarbonate of soda.

Ingredients (makes 1 loaf):

• 450 g strong white flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 40 g butter (diced)
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (sodium bicarbonate)
• 300 ml buttermilk (you might not use it all)
• 100 g dark / plain chocolate (roughly chopped)

Stir together the flour, salt, sugar and bicarbonate of soda. Rub the butter into the dry ingredients until it looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the pieces of chocolate.

Add enough buttermilk to make a soft dough.

Turn the dough out onto a surface dusted with flour. Mix or knead it just enough to pull it together and shape it into a round loaf. Score the loaf into 8 triangles.

Bake the loaf on a greased baking tray at 200° C; it should take about 30-35 minutes. The authors of Country Bread recommend eating the bread warm with a cup of coffee for a special breakfast. I don’t know how traditionally Irish it is, but the chocolate does not make the loaf too sweet, and the buttermilk gives the soda bread a nice tang.

I will be submitting this recipe to yeastspotting at WildYeast.