Six Seed Soda Bread Food

SEEDED WHOLE GRAIN SODA BREAD

Steps:

• Mix millet, quinoa, amaranth, 1 cup oats, 1 cup buttermilk, and 1/2 cup water in a small bowl. Cover and let sit 8-12 hours. (Alternatively, bring ingredients to a simmer in a small saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat and let sit until mixture is thick like porridge, about 2 hours.)
• Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly oil an 8"-diameter cast-iron skillet or cake pan. Whisk whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, flaxseed, salt, baking soda, and 1/4 cup sunflower seeds in a large bowl. Work in butter with your fingers until largest pieces are pea-size. Make a well in the center and add brown rice syrup, oat mixture, remaining 1 1/4 cups buttermilk, and remaining 1 Tbsp. oil. Mix with a wooden spoon until dough is smooth, homogenous, and still slightly sticky.
• Form dough into a ball and place in prepared pan. Brush with buttermilk; top with more oats and sunflower seeds. Cut a large X into the top and bake until golden brown and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of loaf registers 190°F, 55-70 minutes. Let cool in pan.
• Do ahead
• Bread can be baked 2 days ahead. Store tightly wrapped at room temperature.

SIX SEED SODA BREAD

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375°F
• In a small bowl combine all the seeds and set aside.
• Combine the flours, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and brown sugar in a large bowl. Add all but 2 tablespoons of the seeds.
• Stir the sour milk/buttermilk (recommend using smaller amount and gradually add more milk as needed) into the dry ingredients just to blend (dough will be sticky).
• Turn out dough on to a well floured board and knead about 5 times, just enough to pull it together into a loose ball. (over kneading will make the bread tough).
• Place the dough on a lightly floured baking sheet and mark it with a deep cross across the top, cutting two-thirds to the way through the loaf with a serrated knife.
• Brush with a little milk and sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons of seeds.
• Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until it sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
• Cool on rack.

SEEDED SODA BREAD

Steps:

• Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Mix the flour, seeds and bicarb in a bowl, then mix together the milk and lemon juice in a small jug and pour it into the dry ingredients. Stir with a knife until the mixture comes together into a sticky dough.
• Tip onto a lightly floured work surface and lightly shape into a ball with wet or floured hands, as it will be sticky to handle. Lift onto a floured baking tray, reshape if required, then sprinkle more seeds over the top and press them in lightly. Bake for 35-40 mins until firm and golden. Cool on a wire rack, then wrap in foil until needed. Will keep chilled for up to four days, or frozen for up to a month.

SEEDED WHOLEMEAL SODA BREAD

Steps:

• Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and line a baking sheet with baking parchment. Put the flour, seeds, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt in a large bowl and mix to combine. Stir the treacle into the yogurt mixture and, when the treacle dissolves, pour onto the dry ingredients. Stir together with the blade of a knife until you have a soft, sticky dough. Leave for 5 mins (this allows time for the liquid to absorb into the bran).
• Tip onto a lightly floured surface and form the dough into a round about 18cm across. It will still be very sticky, so don't over-handle it - treat it like scone dough rather than bread dough. Lift onto the baking sheet and bake for 25-30 mins until the crust is golden and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath.

COPYCAT RANKIN IRISH FRUIT SODA BREAD

Steps:

• Pre-heat the oven to about 180 Celcius (around 350 Fahrenheit / Gas Mark 4), or perhaps just a little less.
• Lightly oil or grease a small (1Lb) loaf tin or lightly flour (or oil) a flat baking tray if you don't have / want to use a loaf tin.
• If substituting for the buttermilk with milk and lemon juice then do that now and put it aside.
• Sieve/sift the flour into a medium sized mixing bowl and add the salt. Scoop up handfuls and allow to drop back into the bowl to aerate the mixture.
• Add the Sultanas and if using them, caraway seeds and vitamin C powder.
• Stir together with a wooden spoon.
• Add and stir in the baking soda.
• Add enough of the buttermilk to make a soft dough. Now work quickly as the buttermilk and soda are already reacting. Knead the dough lightly - too much handling will toughen it, while too little means it won't rise properly. It should require a couple of minutes at most. Basically you're adding the buttermilk as you're kneading it just enough to work the ingredients together properly at which point it needs to be baked straight away in the hot oven.
• If using a baking tray rather than a loaf tin, then form a round loaf about as thick as your fist. Otherwise shape it to a similar size but such as will fit in the loaf tin.
• Place it on a lightly-floured baking tray and lightly cut a cross in the top with a floured knife "to let the faeries out so they don't jinx your bread", or just put it in the loaf tin and lengthways cut a line along the top.
• Put at once to bake near the top of the pre-heated oven. Bake for about 35-45 minutes. "When baked, the loaf will sound hollow when rapped on the bottom with your knuckles.".
• Wrap immediately in a clean tea-towel if you prefer the crust to be softer.
• This bread will keep well for a couple of days if very well wrapped. If unwrapped it will dry out very quickly - within half a day. It freezes beautifully.
• Best served slightly warm on its own or with butter.
• Note:.
• The Rankin recipe that I was copying does not use caraway seeds at all and uses sultanas not raisins. Some Irish fruit soda bread recipes use caraway seeds and a larger number don't. I love caraway seeds but I like this bread best without. I've listed as a suggestion only. I use Bread flour because I have plenty and I imagine it gives a better rise but I understand that plain flour (All Purpose Flour) works just fine-never used it myself.
• Historical notes:.
• There are hundreds or thousands of recipes, most of them contain egg or rice flour or cornflour etc. Such ingredients would not have been available to most poor Irish families in towns and cities. The point of Irish Soda Breads (as well as Scottish Shortbreads for that matter) was that it was made by a people so poor that they could not even afford to buy yeast (which was not readily available) to bake their daily bread and was basically the normal bread such as they baked every day which had sugar and fruit added as a special sweet and fruity Sunday treat because they couldn't afford to make a proper cake.
• It's convenient from a cutting point of view if you've got a very small loaf tin, but a flat or round baking tray will do fine. It was originally made as round loaf sitting on a griddle (UK: basically a form of frying pan) baked in a Bastible (an iron baking pot - a type of oven - they were made in Barnstable, Devon hence the name) over the glowing embers of a peat turf fire. Because of the way the bread rises it's not essential to be so accurate as it is with a yeast-based bread so volume measures (cups and spoons) could just as easily be used instead if you don't have a set of kitchen scales as would have been the case across Ireland in the early 1800s when they were first made.