IRISH SODA BRAD

Despite keeping in touch with me via email, text, and Skype for nigh-on two years, my mother is still quite firmly on one end of the technological bell curve. (Three guesses as to which end, and the first two don’t count.) She is wonderful in every way, and I do most heartily appreciate her interesting choices of emoticons, punctuation, and capitalization in digital communiques. Last year she sent me this recipe under the subject line “IRISH SODA BRAD,” and so it has remained in my mind. Somewhere, somehow, a guy named Brad is really delicious and fluffy. I like him a lot.

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking POWDER
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking SODA
1/4 cup butter
2 eggs
1-3/4 cups buttermilk

DIRECTIONS:

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda; mix thoroughly. Cut in butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs.

Beat together eggs and buttermilk. Add to flour mixture all at once, stirring with fork to make soft dough.

Knead lightly on floured surface about 10 times. Form into ball, place on greased baking sheet, and flatten into an 8-inch round.

Cut a large “X” about 1/4 inch deep on the top of the loaf. Bake for 1 hour at 350 or until golden brown and bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Makes 1 large loaf.

MY MODIFICATIONS:
I’m vegan, so I change up most of the recipes I find or have passed down to me. Finding creative solutions to the tricky business of subtituting eggs or milk gets much easier with practice, and leads to some delicious results. For this recipe, I made the following changes:

– Each cup of buttermilk can be replaced with 1 tbsp vinegar or lemon juice mixed with 1 cup almond/soy/rice milk. I would try just making one cup of “buttermilk” and using plain milk replacement for the other 3/4 cup to avoid funny-tasting brad.
– The two eggs can be replaced with commercial egg replacer powder, 1/4 cup applesauce or 1/2 banana per egg (if you want a slightly fruity taste to your brad), or 1 tbsp ground flaxseed + 3 tbsp water per egg.
– Butter is easy-peasy: replace with vegetable oil, vegan margarine, or even applesauce (if you’re feeling healthy, and again if you like an apple-y brad).
– I also used a 3:1 ratio of whole wheat to all-purpose flour, mostly because I only had a tiny bit of white flour left, but also because whole wheat is yummy and works well in this recipe.

Om nom nom. Nom nom.