Over the summer I started making my own bread, which was nice activity for awhile, but it just got out of control with all the canning and marathon training. Eventually, you realize you can only do so much, so I settled on store bought. It has, however, haunted me ever since I stopped. I worry about the preservatives in even the sandwich bread from Whole Foods, how they process all the vitamins out of commercial wheat, etc.

THEN I was perusing my cookbooks on Sunday afternoon (as we all do, of course) and finally read the soda bread recipe that’s been merely taking up space next to the pancake and waffle recipes in Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food. Turns out soda bread isn’t like quick bread in the sense of being pretty much cake. Its actual bread, its just leavened with baking soda instead of yeast, so, as promised by Alice herself, the whole process takes less than an hour. I did a few quick google searches to confirm that it is, in fact, acceptable to make sandwiches and toast with soda bread. Turns out, it is. Soda bread is bread as much a hearty rye. It is probably a bit heavier in terms of calories because it uses buttermilk instead of water (the acid in the buttermilk is what mixes with the baking soda to initiate the rising process once the bread is in the oven), but if you’re using good buttermilk, you’re getting more nutrients as well. If you don’t have buttermilk (I didn’t) you can use whole milk spiked with the juice of a whole lemon (the bread is a little dense, but it rose pretty well.) The loaf comes out looking rustic and delicious and stays moist for a days (the loaf I made on Monday is still going strong) and makes for a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I used all purpose unbleached flour for this first loaf as it was a test run, but I’ve read that you can replace up to 3/4 of it with a heartier, healthier wheat flour. So next weeks loaf will contain some of the Farmer Ground Half Wheat flour I purchased at the farmers market.

You can also bake the bread on a pizza stone. Follow the same directions for the stone as you would for pizza (ie preheat the stone in the oven.)

Soda Bread:

3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 cups buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450F. Combine the dry ingredients and stir together to mix thoroughly. Create a whole in the dry ingredients and pour in 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk. Stir into flour until combined. Add more buttermilk as necessary. The dough should be soft but not sticky. Gather dough and place on flour surface. Knead until it comes together nicely in a ball (this won’t take long). If not using pizza stone, place the dough on an oiled cookie sheet and press out into a 1 1/2 inch thich round. Take a knife and cut an X on the top of the bread being sure to cut completely from one side to the other. Bake at 450F for 15 minutes, turn the oven down to 400F and bake for 30 more minutes. To confirm doneness, tap the bottom of the loaf, it should sound hollow.