Gluten-Free Irish Soda Bread

This tender loaf is best eaten warm from the oven with a bowl of stick-to-your ribs Irish soup. Leftovers can be grilled in a drizzle of olive oil or your favorite buttery spread. I do the American Mic-Mac/Prussian thing and add caraway and currants -or gasp!- even raisins to my soda bread. But if this offends your Irish soda bread sensibility, Darlin’, by all means omit. Recipes aren’t written in stone, after all. And bread should make you happy.

Dry ingredients:

1 teaspoon baking soda

Wet Ingredients:

2/3 cup currants or raisins- if you like

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Lightly oil an 8-inch round cake pan and dust it with cornmeal.

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.

Whisk the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl- start with 3/4 cup liquid at first.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Start with 3/4 cup buttermilk/non-dairy milk and slowly pour the wet into the dry ingredients, gently mixing as you go [I use a soft silicone or rubber spatula to do this]. If you need a little more rice milk to moisten the dough, add a tablespoon at a time and stir in.

When the dough is evenly moist, add the caraway and raisins. Stir only briefly to mix them in.

Scrape and spoon out the dough into the prepared cake pan; and using moist or rice-floured palms, flatten and shape the dough into a rounded loaf. Sprinkle with a very light dusting of cornmeal or rice flour.

Using a dry sharp knife, slice a criss-cross into the dough (not too deep!) to discourage the mischievous fairies from messing with your humble loaf of bread.

Place the pan into the center of a preheated oven. Bake for about 30 minutes, until the loaf is golden and crusty and sounds hollow when thumped. Insert a wooden toothpick into the center to test for doneness.

Cool on a wire rack for ten minutes; and turn the loaf out of the pan to cool to room temperature – although it’s best warm and tender from the oven, I think, even if it tends to crumble a bit. Serves 8.

Yields one loaf of bread.

Karina’s Notes:

Soda breads are definitely best eaten the day they are baked.

Slice and freeze leftovers for grilling, or use leftovers to make a breakfast bread pudding.

Rustic Irish Potato and Cabbage Soup

1 pinch raw sugar

Instructions:

Put on a Van Morrison CD.

Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat and add the onion; stir for five minutes or so. Add the garlic and cabbage and stir together; cook until the cabbage has wilted. Add the potatoes, carrots and sausages. Stir. Season with caraway, parsley, sea salt and fresh ground pepper.