Four simple ingredients go into the basic Irish Soda Bread recipe, although you can add in other things like raisins, orange zest and such. I stuck to the basics. My dough was really wet and sticky. I added in a touch more flour when kneading the bread, but I didn't want to overdo it. I'm used to baking bread with yeast and I know that the amount of flour needed varies a bit each time you bake. This is the first time I've made a baking soda bread and I was afraid of making the bread too dry.
The bread came out nicely, but not great. On the positive side, I loved the texture. It was dense and chewy. On the negative side, it tasted a bit salty and I didn't break up the baking soda enough. There were a couple of brown spots in the finished loaf that tasted of cooked baking soda. Fortunately, we could see them and pick them out. In our family, I was the one most bothered by this. The other three liked the bread.
Will I make this again? I'm not sure. It's certainly easy enough and I can make changes to make the bread less "baking sodaish" and salty, but I enjoy working with yeast and there are so many recipes out there to try.
Looking ahead to pizza rustica.
