Irish Brown Bread
A quick wholemeal soda bread raised with bicarbonate of soda and buttermilk, baked until the crust sounds hollow.
Photograph credit: Brown Bread and Irish Butter by Benreis · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Mix it fast and bake it at once. That is the most useful instruction, because the raising agent starts working the moment the buttermilk touches the bicarbonate of soda, and every minute of delay is lost rise.
Stir the wholemeal flour, plain flour, bran, salt and bicarbonate together in a big bowl. Make a well, pour in most of the buttermilk and mix with one hand until the dough just comes together. It should be soft and a little sticky, and the less you handle it the lighter the bread. Do not knead it. Kneading makes soda bread tough.
Shape into a round, set it on a floured tray and cut a deep cross in the top, which helps it bake through in the middle.
Bake at 200°C / 390°F for 15 minutes, then lower the oven to 180°C / 355°F and bake for 30 minutes more. If your oven runs hot, check at 40 minutes in total. It is done when it sounds hollow when tapped underneath.
What People Ask
How long does Irish Brown Bread take to make?
10 minutes of preparation and 45 minutes of cooking, so at least 55 minutes. The method also needs time for cooling, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 8.
Irish Brown Bread: Step by Step
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Heat the oven to 200°C / 390°F and dust a tray with flour. Mix the wholemeal flour, plain flour, bran, salt and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl.
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Make a well, pour in most of the buttermilk and mix quickly until the dough just comes together, adding the rest if needed.
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Shape into a round, set on the tray and cut a deep cross in the top.
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Bake for 15 minutes, lower the oven to 180°C / 355°F and bake for 30 minutes more until it sounds hollow underneath.
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Cool on a rack before slicing.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Worth Getting Right
- Bake as soon as it is mixed.
- Do not knead.
- If your oven runs hot, check at 40 minutes in total.
- Tap the base to test.
Swaps and Variations
- Out of buttermilk? The usual stand-in is a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred into 250 ml of ordinary milk and left five minutes; it is thinner than cultured buttermilk, so a batter may need a little less of it.
Pairs Well With
Salted butter · Smoked salmon · Cheddar · Vegetable soup
Storage
Best on the day it is baked. Keeps wrapped for 3 days, and is good toasted.
The Numbers per Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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