#baking

St. Patrick’s Day is a few days away and I am beyond excited to share my gluten-free Irish soda bread recipe. If you follow me on Instagram, you may know that I have been testing out this recipe for weeks. I set a goal for myself to share this recipe in time for St. Paddy’s day. After many failed attempts, I was definitely getting discouraged. I swear I was close to tears this past Sunday when I finally got this recipe right. I am so proud of it. I called my mom right away with a mouth full of bread.

Irish Soda Bread is supposed to an easy, throw together recipe. Its made of a few simple ingredients that were considered common in Irish households when this bread first came to be. I also learned that traditional Irish soda bread is plain – no raisins! Now that I got my recipe down pat, I do think it is pretty simple, but I am not sure how common it is to find buttermilk in someone’s fridge.

I haven’t had Irish soda bread in about 7 years, so I wasn’t sure what it should taste like. I started off with Ina Garten’s Irish Soda Bread recipe {substituting all purpose flour for GF flour} and it did not turn out well. Ina is amazing, so I am sure her recipe turns out great with regular all-purpose flour. I also tried a recipe that I received from someone who came to my bridal shower. I am all for experimenting when I am cooking, but doing the same with baking was a big challenge. This was also my first attempt ever at Irish soda bread.

My first few attempts lead to very dense bread that hardly resembled Irish soda bread. I wasn’t sure if it was due to my oven {which is gas}, the flour or my technique. I first noticed improvements when I chilled the butter, buttermilk and egg. Next, I saw improvement the longer I chilled the dough before baking. But the biggest improvement came from my choice of flours. King Arthur’s Measure for Measure flour was a game changer! I highly recommend using this flour for my recipe. It totally changed the texture of my bread.

I had been using Bob’s Redmill 1:1 flour {which has worked great in other recipes} but I found that it was what cause my bread to be dense and not bake evenly. I changed up the baking temperature and bake time, but it never seemed to bake correctly. Regardless of the flour this bread bakes with a lot of cracks, so I didn’t find it necessary to score the dough with an “x” before baking it {I tried that too}.

If you try my recipe, I would love to know! Please leave a comment below or on my Instagram @redroseandhoney.

Disclaimer: I am participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. All opinions/recommendations are my own.

Gluten-free Irish Soda Bread

Time: 2hr 30mins
Difficulty: easy
Print

Ingredients

1 cup butter milk (very cold)
1 egg (very cold)
2 tbsp unsalted butter, cubed (very cold)
2 cups gluten-free flour blend
1/8 cup coconut sugar
5/8 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup raisins

Directions

– Dice butter into small cubes (about 1/4 inch) and place in a small bowl.
– Beat egg in buttermilk with a fork.
– Place in butter and buttermilk mixture in the freezer for about 10 minutes to chill while you prepare dry ingredients. Do not let it freeze!
– In a stand mixer combine dry ingredients on low speed, adding raisins last.
– Slowly added buttermilk mixture and butter on low speed. Combine well, but don’t over mix. Dough should be sticky.
– Turn dough out onto floured surface (flour your hands too), lightly kneading dough to form a ball. Do not score with “x”
– Chill dough in fridge for at least 1 hour.
– Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
– Once oven is ready, place dough on a parchment lined baking sheet and place in oven.
– Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees then turn heat down to 350, baking for another 30 minutes.
– Test bread with toothpick. Once it comes out clean, allow bread to cool slightly then transfer to cooling rack. Allow bread to cool for at least an hour before cutting.
– Serve plain, with powdered sugar or with Irish butter.

I am not much of a baker mostly because I don’t like to measure when I am cooking. Baking itself isn’t that easy. Gluten-free baking is often mission impossible. For a variety of reason that Alton Brown could probably explain much better than me gluten-free flours don’t behave the same way as traditional flours. Gluten-free baking can easily turn into a science project as you mix different flours and starches to get the perfect blend. For those of us who are less inclined to be scientists in the kitchen Bob’s Redmill and King Arthur now have gluten-free flour blends that can be more easily substituted in “normal” recipes. I have used both and feel that each work best in different recipes, so trial and error is the best approach when choosing between them.

Last summer my fiance and I went on an amazing trip to Ireland {I’m very behind on that travel blog}. While were there I was pleasantly surprised by how aware the country was of food allergies in general; not even just gluten. We ate so many scones in Ireland. Yes, gluten-free scones! While we were there we talked about how once we were settled in our new house I would make us scones and we could reminisce about our trip. Last week I decided it was time to give it a try.

On the weekends I love watching Food Network and The Cooking Channel in the morning. It’s really the only time that “real” cooking shows are on. I love watching Ina Garten {anyone else excited about her new series?!} so I decided to go with her Strawberry Scone recipe. I used King Arthur’s Measure for Measure flour and reduced the recipe to 1 stick of butter.

If you have been following my wedding blogs or Instagram you may know that I am a soon-to-be-bride and a new homeowner! We have been in our house for a few months, but I have resisted buying any major kitchen items because I will be having a bridal shower. That being said I do not have the standard kitchen equipment normally required to make scones. To my surprise the scones turned out pretty good even though I don’t have an electric mixer, measuring spoons, egg wash brush or a rolling pin. But I must admit, I am really looking forward to my bridal shower and filling my kitchen with all of the awesome things I picked out!

Using my mini-food processor I cut the butter into the flour in batches and mixed all of the ingredients by hand. I combined the dough into a ball and on a floured cookie sheet lined with parchment paper I worked the dough into a disk. I picked up a trick from a Martha Stewart show that helps keep your parchment paper in place. You can use small binder clips to secure it to the cookie sheet.

Overall I would consider this recipe a success, but it could use a few tweaks. The scones were a bit bland, so next time I may add more sugar or powdered sugar after they’re baked. They were also a bit dense which is most likely due to the gluten-free flour. Next time I would try another brand and also bump up the amount of strawberries.