Wheaten Bread

So this is the first post on the new blog and we’ll start of with wheaten bread, or brown soda, depending where you’re from in Ireland. This is my favourite bread, warm from the oven with butter and strawberry jam (recipe to follow sometime soon) or as a quick lunch to eat at my desk with some cheese, preferably cheedar, and ham. It doesn’t matter when or where you eat it as long as you have a nice big mug of warm Irish tea to wash it down! Enjoy!
350g wholemeal flour
100g strong white flour
300ml buttermilk
1 heaped teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (not baking powder)
1 teaspoon salt to taste
50g porridge oats

1. Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C.
2. Sift flours, salt, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and oats together in a bowl.
3. Add buttermilk and mix into a dough.
4. Form into a ball.
5. Place onto a greased baking tray (or into a loaf tin)
6. Cut half way through the loaf with a sharp knife then again the other way to form a cross.
7. Cook for 30 mins
8. Bread is done when it sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom

If you don’t have buttermilk, it’s impossible to find here in Southern Italy, add the juice of half a lemon to normal milk or use milk which is one or two days out of date!