Grandma Bridget Dinnigans Irish Soda Bread

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swindy

New Member
Ok Folks St. Paddy's day is just around the corner so I am posting my grandmothers receipt for Irish soda bread. This is the receipt she brought with her from Ireland and was made in her family for many generations, so it's the real thing. This is a heavy course bread and is wonderful spread thick with butter. If you pass the receipt around please keep Grandma Dinnigans name on it.

Irish Soda Bread

3 cups flour
5 tsp baking powder
1 level tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 box raisins
Caraway seeds ( never had a measurement, small pile in the palm of your hand)
1 cup of milk
1 egg
1tblsp butter

Sift the flour, baking powder,salt and sugar together. Melt butter with a little bit of the milk, mix the egg with the rest of the milk,then mix with the dry Ingrid.. Add the raisins and caraway seeds. (The mixing is going to get difficult.) Turn out the dough into a 8" Cast iron frying pan, that is greased and dusted with a little flour. You can use a larger pan but just mound the dough up in the middle of the pan. Cut a shallow cross in the top of the dough from edge to edge and sprinkle a little bit of flour on the top.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees . Bake at 400*for 10 minutes then reduce the heat to 325* or 350* and continue baking for 50 minutes. Let cool and then slice as needed and pile on the butter. This is soo good.

Happy St. Paddy's day!!!!!
 
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Dale

Super Moderator
Staff member
Thanks for posting the heirloom recipe, it sounds really really good.
 

Randy

Super Moderator
Staff member
Sharon, do you still do any of the traditional celebration? We will have corned beef and cabbage. Fiona will make the soda bread, and we will probably have a family movie night and all watch a movie about the old country. After I made that pistachio pudding dessert recently, my wife told me I should make that for St. Patrick's Day. I'm ready to comply.
 

swindy

New Member
Randy I do celebrate St. Paddy's day in 1 way or another. this year I will be having dinner with friends, she is making the Corned Beef and I will make the Irish Soda bread. And of course I will be watching the parade down 5th Ave. on TV.

If you want to see a great Irish Move try to get the movie Da. It's about an Irish immigrant who returns home to Ireland to bury his father and close up the old home, only to have visions of his fathers ghost, the rest of the movie is about resolving the relationship between them. I think Micheal Sheen is the star.
 

Randy

Super Moderator
Staff member
That sounds like one I would love to see. I have a couple of good tapes I recorded from public television several years back. They are documentaries. One is called "Out of Ireland" but I can't remember the other names. I'll see if I can find that movie. When I turned off the computer last evening and headed for the bedroom, MF was watching a movie with Whoopi Goldberg in it and she played the part of the "Grand Banshee". It was basically a plot about a love affair between a fairy princess and a leprechaun lad. It was pure fantasy, but kind of cute.
 

swindy

New Member
Randy I have the Out of Ireland movie, it is an old one as my mother recorded it and she passed away in 1993. I hope you can find Da as it is also a very old film. But well worth the search.
I hope you are enjoying St.Paddy's Day. I am off to start the Soda bread. Does your wife use baking soda in her Irish Soda Bread?
 

Kya D

Active Member
swindy can you tell me why they call it soda bread. Until Iread this recipe I always thought it was because it had soda in it.
Just curious
 

Randy

Super Moderator
Staff member
It's my daughter Fiona that makes the soda bread, Sharon. Kya, I always assumed that's why they called it soda bread too as I haven't looked at the recipe myself. I won't make it unless Fiona asks me to in her stead. She does a good job with it and I won't try and compete with her success. I saw upstairs that she was starting to lay out the ingredients.
 

Randy

Super Moderator
Staff member
Kya, I just scrolled back up and looked at Grandma Bridgett Dinnigan's recipe and I see there is no soda in it (sort of). But the main ingredient in baking powder is soda (bicarbonate of soda) so it really does have soda there.
 

Randy

Super Moderator
Staff member
Not a chemist, Kya, but I was classified as a research assistant. That's a fancy name for laboratory technician.
 

swindy

New Member
Kya I always thought Baking Powder was a refined type of Baking soda and that maybe people changed from the soda to the powder for some reason. At one point I decided to mix the amount of powder with soda, I really didn't see any difference in the results.
 

Kya D

Active Member
I guess I just expected to see soda in the ingredients.
I am still going to try this recipe. It sounds really great.
 

Randy

Super Moderator
Staff member
I was watching the History Channel while I was on the treadmill today and they were running some shows on bread. It was pretty interesting. There is a famous bakery in San Francisco that does sourdough bread and has done so for 150 years using the same original starter. They only use three other ingredients; flour, salt, and water.
 


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