nomad News-Vol.3-No.72

(I sent the following letter to the editor of the Crossville Chronicle, in response to a recipe they published for Irish Soda Bread) I feel obliged to take exception to the recipe for “Easy Irish Soda Bread” in your March 12 edition. There is no such thing as “easy”. Life isn’t easy but you do your best to improve it, not emasculate it. Easy is a word that should be stricken from the dictionary. To get back to the recipe, no self-respecting Irish person would put caraway seeds, eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla in Irish Soda Bread. To “pour” a bread batter into a cake pan goes beyond sacrilege. In fact, it is no longer bread. It’s cake. This is no secret, but for the first time I am going to divulge my mother’s 100-year old recipe for Irish Soda Bread: 3 cups flour 3 tblsp sugar 1 tsp salt 1 tsp baking soda ¾ cup of raisins Mix dry ingredients, then add 1 ¾ - 2 cups buttermilk Mix with wooden spoon (be sure its wood) until consistency is such that a large ball of dough can be amassed. Spread flour on a board and roll the dough until all sides are covered. Shape dough. Place (notice, not poured) in a greased pan. Bake at 350 degrees For 45-60 minutes. One more thing you need is a broom. Not one of those plastic “knock-off” things they peddle today, but a real broom, made with real straw. You keep it in the corner for general sweeping. After 45 minutes, you go over and break a piece of straw from the broom and stick it in the middle of the loaf. If it comes out clean, the bread is done. Unless you are an accomplished baker, your effort might end up like mine did when I attempted to make a Festive Italian Bread for our next-door Italian neighbors when we lived in South Philadelphia. By comparison, a brick would have been more palatable than the bread. Andy Dolan