Soda bread

Traditional soda bread has four ingredients: flour, buttermilk, salt and baking soda. The acid in the buttermilk reacts with the baking soda and makes the dough rise without yeast and without fermentation time. The moist dough is mixed quickly, shaped into a round loaf and given a cross cut on top before baking. The crust becomes firm and the crumb is dense and slightly tangy.

The bread spread across Ireland from the first half of the 19th century, when baking soda began to be sold. The wheat grown on the island had little gluten and did not rise well with yeast, and baking soda was an inexpensive, reliable leavening. Families baked the bread every day, often in a covered iron pot over an open fire or on a griddle.

There are several forms. Brown soda bread, or brown bread, made with whole wheat flour, is the most common for everyday use. The white version is lighter, and there are versions with raisins. In the north of the island the dough is rolled into a disk and cut into four pieces, the farls, which are cooked on the griddle; there they also make wheaten bread, whole wheat and sometimes sweetened. The cross on top helps heat reach the center, and popular tradition says it blesses the bread or lets the fairies out.

A domestic bread across the whole island, with no known place of origin, soda bread is served at breakfast, alongside smoked salmon, soups and stews.