Quick and Easy 5-Ingredient Vegan Irish-ish Soda Bread – GWC Mag

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If you’ve longed to bake sourdough bread or bread leavened with active dry yeast but find the process intimidating, start with easy-to-make soda bread. You’ll not only enjoy delicious bread, you’ll also skip additives you might want to avoid and the single-use plastic bags that house most loaves.

You need only flour, baking soda, salt, soy milk and an acid to curdle the milk to make this vegan version of soda bread. Mix those, knead the dough minimally to incorporate the ingredients, form a disk, score it and bake it immediately—no yeast or proofing needed. The acid reacts with the baking soda to raise the dough.

Irish vs Irish-ish soda bread

With the introduction of baking soda (or bread soda) in Ireland in the early 1800s, when most people didn’t have ovens, home bakers could easily and quickly make an inexpensive loaf of soda bread, according to Irish chef and cooking instructor Rory O’Connell. They would bake the bread inside a lidded cast-iron pot set over the coals of a turf fire. Technically, Irish soda bread does not contain raisins, caraway seed, butter or eggs but those cake-like versions do taste delicious.

The acid and the soy milk in this soda bread version

Because I enjoy making all the things, I make both the soy milk and vinegar called for in this recipe. You don’t need to use homemade though. Store-bought ingredients will work.

But if you do want to brew some vinegar, it’s very easy and mostly hands-off. You’ll have to be patient while your concoction transforms however. For the vinegar I used here, I first made this fruit soda, substituting rhubarb for the strawberries. I then let the drink ferment until the good microbes had consumed all the sugars to leave behind wonderful vinegar.

You can find the soy milk recipe here (half will render 5 cups of soy milk, which is still way more than you’ll use for one loaf but you may want to bake a couple of them). It calls for only water and soybeans. I buy organic soybeans because food labelled as organic must be GMO-free.

Why choose organic soy?

In 1996, Monsanto introduced genetically modified soybeans that can tolerate the company’s synthetic herbicide glyphosate, aka Roundup. (It’s a marketers cross-selling dream!) Weeds that are naturally resistant to glyphosate, a probable carcinogen, survived, bred and spread.

To treat these super weeds, many farmers turned to a different synthetic herbicide called dicamba and began planting dicamba-tolerant soybeans that chemical and seed companies had developed. Dicamba can drift for miles, damaging both crops not tolerant to it and wildlife habitats. (For a great read on the unintended consequences of man’s attempt to control nature, check out Elizabeth Kolbert’s best-selling book Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.)

Organic soybeans may cost more than industrial soybeans but I’m happy to pay more and grateful to be able to do so. If I bought soy milk, I would also look for organic.

Optional soda bread add-ins

A cup of dried fruit adds a bit of sweetness to soda bread. The loaf above contains dried cranberries as well as caraway seed and orange zest. The slices tasted something like scones.

I try to keep a stash of orange (and lemon) zest in my freezer at all times. This flavor-enhancing, free byproduct elevates soda bread, muffins, pancakes, quick breads and so on. When adding zest to the soda bread, stir it into the buttermilk to prevent it from clumping in the dry ingredients. (Or rub the zest into the dry ingredients between your thumb and fingers.)

Add-ins or no add-ins, soda bread tastes best while still warm from the oven. On day two or even day three (if you have any left), enjoy it toasted.

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