Recipe: Irish brown bread

This year, I gave Irish brown bread a shot. This long-time Irish staple is basically another version of Irish soda bread made with whole wheat flour and, in the case of this recipe, fewer ingredients.

Instead of yeast, both use baking soda as the leavening agent. And that means that you don't need to knead this dough much at  all or allow it to rise. It took me about an hour to make the dough and bake it in the oven.

There are many recipes online for brown bread. Some have ingredients such as butter, eggs, oat flour or wheat germ. Others don't. I landed on a recipe from Chow.com not because it might be an authentic version of the bread (I make no claim on that), but because it had ingredients that I have on hand and that I suspect most people have hanging out in their pantries.

One exception: I don't usually have buttermilk, but I often mix one cup of milk with one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to get a similar effect. And that's what I did here.

The result is another moist loaf of bread that's great on its own or as toast with jam or butter or cream cheese.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Dust a baking sheet with some flour or lay down a sheet of parchment paper. Whisk together the flours, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add the buttermilk and melted butter. Mix it all up with your hands until nearly all of the flour is moistened and the dough holds together - about one minute. This is messy and sticky and fun for kids to do!

Dust a clean work surface with some flour. Set the dough on top and knead it just a bit. You don't want to see any visible pockets of flour, but you also want to be careful not to knead it too much. (This is easy Irish brown bread, after all). The kneading should last no longer than a minute.

Make the dough into a round of about 7 inches in diameter and 2 inches thick. Put it on the baking sheet. Cut a big X across the top from edge to edge and about 1/2 inch deep. 

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until the bread makes a hollow sound when tapped. Move it to a wire rack and cool. You're supposed to let this bread cool completely before you eat it so it doesn't crumble, but hot bread is very hard to resist.