After making rugalach two weeks ago, Irish soda bread was a walk in the park. In fact, the recipe looked so easy, that I decided to have three of my grandchildren make it. Since schools so longer offer Home Ec, it has been my goal as a grandmother to spend some time with my grandkids both cooking (namely baking) and sewing.
We started the Irish soda bread experiment with my showing the three kids (6-year-old twin girls, and their 7-year-old brother) where Ireland is located in relation to the rest of Europe, namely England, Scotland and Wales. There were pretty amazed it was so far away from where they live (Ohio). And since they had just experienced St. Patrick's Day, they were somewhat familiar with Ireland and things Irish.
From there, we measured out the flour, using a scale, and the twins scooped in flour until we got to 1 pound, 4 ounces. Using the 5 ounce per cup suggestion in "Baking with Julia," I reasoned that we should reach 20 ounces of flour to make the bread.
The twins then took turns adding the soda, salt and buttermilk. Two out of three of the kids liked raisins, so we decided to knead in raisins in half of the dough, leave the other half plain, then merge the two halves together.
That seemed to work well and that way everyone was happy. One of the kids slashed the top, and the bread went into the oven for the 50-mintue bake.
We thought the bread looked much like the picture in the book, and all three liked the taste. It couldn't have been easier!
How fun to make this a project with the kids! It was definitely a relief to work on something like this after the rugelach :-)
ReplyDeleteLooks great and what gorgeous kids!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful grandchildren! I love baking with mine. Your Soda Bread looks simply wonderful!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun grandmother you are. Those kids are very lucky. In addition to everything else, they are learning cooperation and compromise.
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