March is here, the month when I make Irish soda bread. Hubby has been asking for this treat since Valentine’s Day, but I stuck to my guns. It wouldn’t be special if I made it all the time, so March is it.
I’ve included the recipe before, and you can find it here. I’ve tried a variety of Irish soda bread recipes over the years and found them to be all the same.
Part of making Irish soda bread is combining the cold butter into the flour. I use my fingers instead of knives, but I never enjoyed this part until I tried a new way to add the butter. It worked brilliantly.
I grate the cold butter into the flour. No cutting the butter into small parts, no breaking the butter apart with my fingers as I mix it in the flour. Cold butter grates like cheese, and it takes no time to mix the flour and butter into crumbles.
I didn’t invent this idea, but I don’t know where I learned it, so I can’t give credit where it’s due. Whoever discovered this trick, thank you for sharing it with the world.
One more thing I did differently this year was I didn’t work the dough on a floured surface. This reduced my clean-up time significantly. I sprinkled flour over the dough in the bowl and coated my hands with more flour. I then took a grapefruit-size amount of dough and worked it in my hands over the bowl.
It’s supposed to be shaggy, so it didn’t take long to form a nice ball and place it on the baking sheet. The recipe makes three small loaves. The best part was that I didn’t have to clean a ton of flour off my counter as I have in years past.
This is a tasty bread that is easy to make. It took me less than fifteen minutes to get it in the oven. I’ll probably make it again before March is gone.
