![]() ![]() Make into a round, place on the baking tray and cut a deep cross in the dough going from edge to edge. Mix with a wooden spoon and when you have brought it together, tip onto a floured surface and knead just once or twice. This could not be simpler: mix the flour, oats, salt and bicarbonate of soda in a mixing bowl, make a well and add the treacle then the liquid(s). Preheat your oven to 200☌ and line a baking tray with a sheet of greaseproof paper Medium-ground oatmeal can also be substituted for porridge oats.Ģ50 ml buttermilk, or 200 ml milk and 50 ml yoghurt If you can’t find plain flour, use self-raising and add just one teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to the mix. ![]() It is easy to make, and it is easy to make substitutions too: buttermilk is tricky to get hold of in the United Kingdom at the best of times, so go for a mixture of milk and yogurt, or just milk. It’s like a giant delicious cakey digestive biscuit and it goes excellently with a good farmhouse Cheddar or Stilton cheese. With this treacle bread, you get a mild bitter sweetness and a lovely brown colour from the treacle, and a good nutty chew from the oats. Soda breads are different to regular breads, they very crumbly, so a sandwich would be disaster, but they are great with soup, especially when still a little warm.Ī cousin to soda bread is treacle bread which I think this is much superior so I thought I would share with you my recipe for it because I think it’s the best of all soda breads, and I have been making it a lot over the last couple of months. These new baking soda leavened breads however, suited their low-gluten flours very well, and they were infinitely adaptable. This lack of stretch from their doughs and batters prevented the slow-release bubbles produced by yeast from growing and remaining stable it made much more sense to make unleavened breads and griddle cakes. Even flour made from wheat grown in Southern England had a low gluten content (our modern plain flour) and although great for pastry, it was never going to make the pillowy fluffy loaves that we think of as standard today for that, high gluten flours imported from Canada were required. Up until that point, the Irish and Scottish were used to dealing with very low gluten flours such as oat and barley, because they grow well in northern latitudes. It wasn’t before long that news of this magic raising agent got to Britain and Ireland. It caught on big time, especially because it meant travelling folk could made bread quickly and easily without the need to for long fermentations. Forever ingenious, the early Americans worked out a way to refine the process easily and instead used bicarbonate of soda (baking soda). Irish soda breads originated in eighteenth century America when settlers discovered that potash made an excellent instant chemical leavening agent. There are no proving stages and it is made in a trice, baking in just a little over half an hour. it’s perfect if the thought faffing about with sourdough starters is too much to bear. Delicious Irish soda bread requires neither bread flour nor yeast, instead regular plain flour and a chemical raising agent. This is infuriating to regular bakers, as is the lack of string bread flour, but there is more than one way to skin a cat. Many home bakers have resorted to making sourdough because one of the most difficult items to get hold of at the moment is bakers’ yeast. Everyone is baking bread and I must say it is lovely to see people making time to bake during these strange times. It should keep well for a few days (if it lasts that long).As I write this, we are still in the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown. This is best done in the oven rather than the microwave otherwise the pastry can go a little soggy. Don’t eat it straight from the oven as it will be piping hot, just leave it to cool down for 15-20 minutes or so and it’s good to go. Usually it’s served warm, slathered with cream, custard or ice cream. So that the dessert doesn’t end up too sickly and cloying, lemon juice and zest is added to the mixture to balance the flavours. ![]() This recipe uses golden syrup which is thick, glossy and very sweet. It generally comes in two varieties – black treacle, which is dark in colour and similar to molasses, and the lighter version which we know more commonly as golden syrup. Treacle is a sweet syrup that is made during the sugar refining process. Treacle tart is a true British classic, and this version has everything that a good treacle tart should have, plus it’s cruelty-free. Want more vegan recipes? Try 3 issues of Vegan Food & Living magazine for just £3!
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