Winter Day in the Kitchen
Posted
Sat, 12/20/03
What a busy day in the kitchen it was!
I started out by making the Latkes I wrote about on Friday, and they turned out rather well. Afterward, I decided to make some of my Irish Soda Bread as Wilbert has never tasted it. I printed the recipe from the Irish page at Food Fare, and was astounded to find an error in my own dish.
In the recipe instructions, I forgot to add how long to bake the Soda Bread. Bright of me, wasn't it? However, since I have yet to receive an e-mail from anyone about the omission, hopefully most of you already know how long to cook Soda Bread. If not, the time runs between thirty-five and forty-five minutes if using my recipe. Sorry about that! The error will be fixed when Food Fare updates at the end of the month.
In any event, Wilbert loved the bread ("delicious" was the word he used), so I plan to make several loaves on Monday as Christmas gifts for various members of my extended family.
This time around, I'm going to double the recipe in order to make bigger loaves, mainly because the only loaf pans I could find were over-large. A single-batch looked somewhat puny, even after it has risen and baked.
So we live and learn in the kitchen . . .
*POSTSCRIPT (Mon, 12/22/03): This afternoon I baked another three five-pound loaves of Irish Soda Bread, only this time doubling my recipe with a few variations. The basic structure of the bread is very similar to biscuit dough – slightly moist and a bit crumbly. In making the larger batch, I softened a cube of butter for each loaf rather than pinching and mashing in cold butter. This seemed to have the same result, creating a crumb-like mixture that came together once the buttermilk was added. I also included a few pinches of sugar and brushed the tops of the split loaves with another mix of melted butter and buttermilk. The loaves came out nearly perfect, wonderful with another pat of butter and a steaming cup of tea.
*Related Blog Posts: Soda Breads (03/16/04) and Rainy Day Soda Bread (04/13/12).
Tags: Bread & Cookies;
Ireland
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