Soda bread - quick, easy and delicious

Making bread by hand is very satisfying, but not a quick process.  In order to have a fresh, just warm loaf of bread ready to slice for lunch time means waking up early, flexing your muscles several times over with kneading and knocking back, having to turn the boiler on to get just the right temperature to ensure the yeast does its rising trick (but that's probably just in our house, as room temps are quite low here!) and then baking and cooling etc., etc., etc.

When hubs heard someone rave about soda bread on telly he was up for having a go at baking some.  It's ridiculously simple and quick to make and after a small number of trials he's got it down to a fine art.  It's delicious too - that always helps doesn't it!

He's used this recipe from the BBC but when he recently had an urge to bake but we didn't have any buttermilk we moved on to the following recipe which is equally good.  Wanting to experiment further, he ditched the lemon juice and semi-skimmed milk and substituted these two amounts with mixtures of full fat Greek yoghurt, sour cream and milk - in no particular individual measurements, just as long as there's some sourness to it and the total measurement is equal to the original lemon and milk measurement (hope that makes sense).  Have a play and see what you like.

Makes 1 loaf (measurements in brackets for larger loaf/4 medium rolls)

250ml or 8fl oz semi-skimmed milk (367.5 ml)
1 tbsp lemon juice (1.5 tbsp)
170g or 6 oz self-raising wholemeal flour (250g)
170g or 6 oz plain flour (250g)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (1.5 tsp)

Set the oven to gas 5, 200 deg C, 180 deg C fan.

Squeeze the lemon juice into a jug and pour in the milk, stir to make it curdle.  Sift the two flours and the bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl - tip in any leftover bran pieces left in the sieve.  Add the curdled milk and mix the ingredients together to form a soft dough.  Place the dough onto a floured surface and bring it all together with your hands making a round flattened ball.

Put the dough onto a baking tray lined with baking paper.  Score the top of the dough with a knife and place the tray in the oven for around 30 minutes until it's golden.

Remove and test that it's ready by tapping the bottom of the bread - it should sound hollow.  Cool on a cooling rack.

Do you like it?

I've finally had a chance to update my blog.  All my blog posts will now be on this blog and no longer on all the individual blogs I used to have.  That is, all craft and shop related posts that were on elliestreasurescrafts and posts about Poppy (the dog) that were here will all be talked about here, the official Ellie's Treasures blog!  As I'm sure all you bloggers out there know, updating or setting up a blog takes alot of time, headaches and sore eyes.  Please bear with me, it's taken me two afternoons to get this far, that is to say, the little tabs at the top of the blog aren't yet ready for viewing.  I need inspiration to make them decent pages - that'll come after a glass or two of wine no doubt!  It's been wonderful looking through all my favourite blogs on-line to get inspiration for my new update.

So, my first "new" post - I thought I'd tell you about the dandelion marmalade I made this week.  I came across the recipe through Make it and Mend it and seeing as how we seem to be over-run with dandelions in our garden this year, it made sense to do something useful with them.  I love making jam, but haven't always been successful!  Strawberry seems to be my easiest to make, no mistakes with that yet, but I did make a batch of blackcurrent jam once that had turned to rock when I tried to spoon it out of the jars.  It was a bit embarrassing actually because I'd freely given away jars of this jam to friends and family - they all probably thought I was trying to break their teeth.  I've been a little cagey giving away homemade jam ever since this episode, always testing a pot first, which is why, sadly, I still have all four of my dandelion marmalade in my cupboard.  It was an easy recipe to follow and smelt absolutely fabulous as I was preparing it.  Many a scoop of the amber nectar went into my mouth as I was pouring it into freshly warmed jars.  Two days later we opened the first jar to find it had all turned to sugar - 90% solid sugar - 10% liquid on the top.  No idea what I did wrong, and I felt a little guilty having made dear Ben pick all the required dandelion heads - and there were an awful lot I have to say.  Anyway, don't let me put you off, I'm sure, should I have had a jam thermometer to hand, all would have worked out perfectly. 

Give it a go and please let me know how your jam turns out.