baking bread

My original plan was to eat one whole day like a real Irish woman, but when I started looking up traditional recipes, there wasn't a single vegetarian one among them. Already breakfast seemed like a feast of meat to me, so I cancelled my plans and started looking for Irish pastries, but after my roommate is on a diet, I didn't dare to fill the air with the sweet smell of temptation. And decided to bake bread. Old fashioned, Irish soda bread.

  After some research I found a quite easy, delicious sounding recipe. I needed some googeling to find out what bicarbonate of soda is and where I can get it, and didn't know anything about self-rising flour either (just took the one we had at home). The rest of the instructions were pretty clear. Next challenge was the measuring. I wasn't able to make use of the measuring unit 'ounce', but what a luck I have google... Anyway, I couldn't find a kitchen balance nor a beaker, so I just made 8 ounces one cup. The rest was a piece of cake- some yoghurt, honey and olive oil, salt, bicarbonate and baking powder (although I don't get what's the difference) and voila! 

I was supposed to mix everything with a wooden spoon and knead it lightly -20 turns max! Of course I got dough all over the kitchen but it was surprisingly un-sticky. I put my little dough ball onto a baking sheet (couldn't find a cake tin as recommended in the recipe) into the oven and watched the dough rise and the bread crust getting crispy for about 45 minutes (our flat is pretty cold and the oven was emitting heat, so I curled up in front of it and literally watched my bread getting ready). Finally when it had baked long enough I took it out and burned myself trying to eat it immediately- it just looked so jummy! Impatiently I watched it cooling down and finally, it was already midnight, I took the first bite. I was a little dissapointed-it tasted strange. My roommate, who I was sharing with wasn't too stoked eithter. She said 'It tastes a little bit like corn'. And only than I realized that the one flour we had had at home, was cornmeal. May I present, the first corn-soda-bread. An Austrian-Irish recipe!

 

And that's what you need: two cups of flour, one cup of yoghurt, a little bicarbonate of soda, some baking soda, a spoon of honey and one of olive oil. And a pinch of salt.

yoghurt, honey and olive oil

 

delicious with butter ;)