043 - Caraway and Marjoram Soda Bread

Soda Bread with Caraway and Marjoram

June 26, 2011

[450W - 400MI][1t Salt, 1t Baking Soda, 2t Caraway Seeds, 2t marjoram]
mix, shape into boule, slash and bake (10 min @230', 35min @200')

Needed new bread in a rush and had zero decent options on a Sunday evening in my neighborhood so I thought I'd make a return to soda bread. I haven't really been impressed with my own soda bread in the past, it's always been a little too gummy, a little too dense, a little too dry, or whatever else. But a piping hot bread out of the oven is hard to get over, so I made a few when I really didn't want to go to the market. This time I thought I would try to produce something nicer so I looked up a recipe through the Wild Yeast Blog. The recipe itself can be found at Luculli and Delights.

The only alterations were that I used less and different herbs and used whole milk instead of the buttermilk that's instructed. This dough was near 90% hydration, making it the stickiest soda bread dough I've made by far - I wonder if this is what accounts for the huge difference. I also made sure to mix quickly and gently. The resulting dough was very soft and loose, quickly losing shape after I slashed the dough. It exhibited a really nice oven spring - after letting it cool for a while I sliced the entire loaf without any difficulty.

The crust was soft and easy to eat, while the crumb was light and fluffy without being too crumbly. I couldn't taste any of the alkaline of the baking soda (which was a major worry when I read this recipe initially) and the caraway and marjoram were a nice addition to the surprisingly sweet and mellow flavor of the bread itself. This was, without a doubt, the tastiest soda bread I've had and certainly the only decent one I've ever produced - they'll no longer be relegated to being the last-ditch option around here.

submitted to YeastSpotting