Dedicated to promoting the
traditional Irish Soda Bread
as baked by our
great-great-grandparents.
Over 80,000 visitors come to this web site each year with the majority just before St. Patrick's Day.
If your "soda bread" has raisins in it, it's not "soda bread," it's called "Spotted Dog" or "Railway Cake"!
If it contains raisins, eggs, baking powder, sugar or shortening, it's called "cake", not "bread."
Welcome! Here you will find history and background information on Irish Soda bread. Click on any of the links on the left to explore. The site was inspired by my personal love of historical accuracy and Irish soda bread. If you have something to contribute about Irish Soda Bread, drop me a line! (I'd love to list Irish Soda Bread recipes handed down generation-to-generation, if you want to share.) This is one of the easiest "societies" to join. No dues, no meetings, no fundraisers! Simply make Irish Soda Bread using traditional ingredients and you're in!! (click on the link "How to Join" to learn more.)
Ed O'Dwyer from
Nenagh, Co Tipperary
now residing in Atlanta, Georgia, USA
The Soda Bread site has moved to
http://www.sodabread.us and we have opened The Irish Eat
Shop for something to serve with your freshly-baked Soda Bread.
Irish Soda Bread: The Tradition Lives on at http://www.sodabread.us
The site contains information, history, and recipes for making traditional Irish Soda Bread as baked by our Irish Ancestors.
Click on http://www.sodabread.us to go to the new site.
If one searches the internet using the term "Traditional Irish Soda Bread" an amazing number of recipes appear. 98% of them incorrect.
Would "French Bread" (15th century) still be "French Bread" if whiskey, raisins, or other random ingredients were added to the mix? So why is traditional "Irish Soda Bread" (19th century) not treated with the same respect for tradition?
A few definitions from the Dictionary.
"Tradition"
1: the
handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth
or by example from one generation to another.
2: cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs,
and institutions
"Bread"
a usually baked and leavened food made of a mixture whose basic
constituent is flour or meal
"Cake"
a sweet baked food made from a dough or thick batter usually containing
flour and sugar and often shortening, eggs, and a raising agent
(as baking powder)
It shocks some people to learn that St. Patrick wasn't holding a slice of Irish Soda Bread in one hand while he drove the snakes out of Ireland with the other. Irish Soda Bread hasn't been around for thousands of years and wasn't introduced to Ireland until around the 1840's when bicarbonate of soda (Bread soda) as a leavening agent was used in Ireland to work with the "soft" wheat grown there. Note: An Irish flour I sometimes use has a marketing department that failed history. The packaging says soda bread has been around since the "Iron Age" (400 BC) but that's bogus. Still, their flour is good!
The basic soda bread is made with flour, baking soda, salt, and soured milk (or buttermilk). That's it!
One ridiculous on-line recipe claiming to be "traditional" included "orange zest" as an ingredient. Obviously created by someone not familiar with Irish History! Tasty, Yes! Traditional, No!
Another site had a recipe for "traditional Irish Soda Bread" that called for yeast to be used. The whole reason bread soda was used in the first place was to replace using yeast as the rising agent. There are even commercial sites selling "Irish Soda Bread" with YEAST as an ingredient. And right before St. Patrick's Day your local supermarket chain will have "Irish Soda Bread" for sale with yeast, sugar, and who knows what on the listed ingredients. (Usually the display is surrounded by four-leave clovers instead of shamrocks. That's your first clue that someone doesn't know much about Ireland!)
While we are certainly at liberty to modify recipes to our heart's content, it is incorrect to claim that these modern recipes are the same as used by our great-great grandmothers in Ireland to feed their families in the 19th century and early 20th century.
In today's world, soda bread has become a dessert cake and the three-leaf shamrock has turned into a four-leaf clover.
The site is here to encourage modern bakers to get in touch with their Irish roots and use the traditional ingredients/recipes when making "traditional Irish soda bread." Visit the Soda Bread Book section and pick up a copy of Irish Traditional Cooking for an excellent reference on traditional Irish cooking. Sales help this site stay alive.
A few absolutes:
Traditional Irish Soda bread does not contain:
"zest" , orange or any other kind
Irish Whiskey. (It is actually a stereotyping insult to think that every "Irish" dish has to contain whiskey.)
Honey (substitute for sugar)
Sugar (see definition of "cake")
eggs (see definition of "cake")
Garlic
Shortening
Heavy Cream
Chiles/Jalapenos
and just about anything else one can think of. (note: all of the above ingredients can be found in "Irish soda bread" recipes somewhere on the web. Interesting, but definitely not Irish Soda Bread.
If you really want a high-calorie, delicious traditional Irish cake, try making a Simnel Cake (served at Easter). It contains all the things that aren't in a soda bread, but that's what makes the difference. A Simnel Cake will impress anyone with your culinary expertise. However, it isn't soda bread! (Simnel originated in England, but, like the English, moved to Ireland and was adopted into the culture.)
Soda bread was baked daily from simple ingredients. The Irish would not have added whiskey to their daily bread any more than a Frenchman would have added it to his baguette.
In America and other parts of the world we tend to forget that this is a basic quick "bread" served with meals and not a "dessert dish."