Trying Something New

Brombeere brought home a new kind of bread the other day.  Irish soda bread.  I like heavier bread, I liked this bread.  So I wanted to add it to my recipe book.  I found one that looked pretty good and when I got looking at it, it looked like a very simple recipe. I really liked that it didn't call for spending time letting the dough rise, then kneading it down, then letting it raise again, and then kneading it back down again.  Some breads take hours going through that cycle and I've never been excited about going through all that.  This recipe didn't call for all that.  Fifteen minutes from start to oven.  Now that sounded like something I could do.

So I got to it.  And it was easy. Even for me, who had never made bread before without a bread machine.  The recipe said the dough would be "shaggy", and it was.  Pretty rough looking. 

But pretty soon it was on the stone and ready to go into the oven.  I had to use craisins because we didn't have any regular raisins.  The recipe said the cross cut into the top would help it cook more evenly.  So into the oven it went.

It took longer to cook than it did to mix and get ready.  After 35 minutes it was done.  I think our oven cooks a little hotter than normal so the bread was just a little more done than preferable but it still turned out well.

Nothing like fresh, warm, buttered bread.  Just like all the times my Mom made bread when I was growing up.