Soda Bread and other things
I blogged about making springtime soda bread a zillion years ago (aka Before Pandemic, before The Cancer Years, even) but I’ve updated the recipe so here it is again. But first, artsy photos of the results.
I could’ve made one big loaf, but someone in the house loves the crusty edges. Baby loaves, more crust.
Close up to show off the boozy golden raisins.
Recipe for “Not-Really-Irish Soda Bread for the Not-really-Irish Holiday”
0. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F & put parchment on a baking sheet. Or butter the sheet, or use cooking spray on it. Non-stick, though. That's the ticket.
1. In a small bowl, dump 1 c. cranberries or golden raisins to soak with a splash of hot water and a hefty splash of sweet whiskey (Irish, bourbon or blended, maybe rum, NOT SCOTCH OH GWADS NOT SCOTCH)
Or leave out the fruit entirely. The bread will still be scrumptious. Anyway.
2. Sift together in a Really Big Bowl (I'll explain Why So Big later):
3 cups of all purpose flour (set aside a half cup more Just In Case things get sticky)
2+ tsp baking powder
1+ tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 c. sugar (leave this out if you’re excluding fruit)
3. Add in and work into dry ingredients with fingers or pastry blender or a fork until you can't feel or see any pieces of butter.
1/2 stick butter (aka 4 tbsps) diced into bits
4. Mix together in any large-enough liquid-holding receptacle:
1 cup milk.
1/2 cup plain yogurt
(you could do 1.5 c. of buttermilk or milk soured w/ 1 tbsp of white vinegar, but this is easy for me because there’s always plain yogurt around.)
5. Tip the wet ingredients + the boozy fruit into the dry ingredients in the Really Big Bowl and stir slowly and gently, scraping from the outside of the bowl and scooping up from the bottom, until everything is just mixed enough there's little dry flour showing and the fruits are mixed in.
6. This is where the Really Big Bowl comes in handy. Every recipe I found said, "turn dough onto a floured work surface and knead five or six times to form into a flat round." I am much too lazy to go cleaning my countertops twice for a single cooking step.
I sling on nitrile gloves and knead the dough in the bowl. Easy-peasy.
6.5 Work the dough until you can just make it hold a proper shape. Don’t knead it like bread. Be gentle. You’ll need that flour you set aside earlier for your hands if you don’t have nitrile gloves. Or keep your hands wet while you do the kneading.
7. Cut the dough into eight chunks with a knife (yes, still in the bowl) Sharp knife, butter knife, whatever you have handy.
7.5 One by one, mush the wedges into rounds you can glob onto the baking sheet. Cut crosses in the tops if you want them to look fancy. (It works. I was impressed)
8. Bake 20-ish minutes until golden brown. I set the timer for 18, bake time ended up being 22 total. Your Oven May Vary.
If you really want to get fancy, melt some butter, swish in a bit of whiskey and drizzle the combo over the tops of the cooling mini-loaves. I didn't bother. I was too busy eating one of them still steaming hot from the oven.
Here’s the other new creation for this week. It is a thing of Great & Terrible Beauty designed by the most excellent & talented Dex Greenbright as a commission for me. Because I needed this in my life.
I’ll order some as stickers, and I’m tempted to make a hoodie for myself. First I have to find a place that will tell me what brand they print on before I order. Because I can’t stand the feel of a lot of them.
Behold: Hope!
Hope will fuck you up if you disrespect its power.
And now, the best part of any post: Cat pic!
Okay, that it until later.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)