a little bit Irish

I can remember having eaten Irish Soda Bread only once before and strangely enough that was in Japan. It was in an Irish pub though and the chef was Irish too and he put soda bread on the menu. At the time I thought it included some magical, mysterious ingredients but oh how wrong I was. Inspiration for trying came from seeing Jezze's loaf, and then seeing how easy the recipe was, I had a go myself. My goodness! Easy peasy and so tastey too! Especially with lashings of butter and jam. It reminds me a lot of damper (a kind of easy camping bread made with a fire) but soda bread has butter milk (substitute 1/2 yoghurt + 1/2 water) in it so tastes even nicer. Jezze tells me you can make a savoury or sweet version too. Savoury with feta, olives and anchovies. Sweet with dates or sultannas.

crusty matters

I have flowerpress to thank for this little piece of baking inspiration: my very first loaf of bread. The 'no knead' type made famous by Jim Lahey from the Sullivan Street Bakery in NY. It's so easy even I can make it. The trick is to plan ahead to give it enough time to work its magic (without you doing any work). For me that meant some simple maths: 18 hours of sitting plus 2+ more hours of sitting (the bread that is, not me) plus 45 mins in the oven = I need to make the dough about 5pm the day before I want it ready. And you also need to have a cast iron pot to cook it in the oven with (mine is a Le Creuset in cobalt blue - the colour is important you know ;)

It tastes really good too. I chose to roll it in a bit of polenta at the end which is why it looks a bit grainy and this gives it a subtle roasted corn smell too which is wonderful. I think I could even get the hang of it and bake bread on a regular basis. Oh and the recipe is Jim's too. He shared it with the NY Times about 3 years ago because he wants people to know how it easy it is to make gorgeous crusty bread at home. Now how lovely is that?