Vegan Soda Bread for St. Patrick’s Day

Vegan Soda Bread is the ultimate St. Patrick’s Day treat! But don’t wait until March 17th to make it! Enjoy a slice or two with a pat of vegan butter and a touch of jam alongside your afternoon tea. This easy Irish soda bread recipe comes together in a matter of minutes with just 6…
Read More »
The post Vegan Soda Bread for St. Patrick’s Day appeared first on Dianne’s Vegan Kitchen.

sliced vegan soda bread with text overlay

What is Soda Bread?

Traditional soda bread is a quick bread that’s made with sodium bicarbonate (a.k.a. baking soda) rather than the traditional leavener of yeast. People often associate soda bread with Ireland, but many countries have their own traditional soda bread recipes, including England, Scotland, Australia, Poland, and even Serbia. Native Americans had their own version of soda bread, which used potash (potassium carbonate) as a leavening agent.

The ingredients of traditional soda bread are flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. The buttermilk contains lactic acid, which reacts with the baking soda in the dough to form tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide. Some soda bread recipes call for eggs, which aren’t really needed at all. Others include raisins, nuts, or caraway seeds, which is a matter of personal preference.

Vegan Soda Bread

Since soda bread is usually associated with Ireland, it has become a St. Patrick’s Day favorite here in the United States. Veganizing it has been on my list of things to do for years now, but never really had much confidence in my baking skills. I recently finished Fran Costigan’s Essential Vegan Desserts course with Rouxbe, and I’m feeling up to the task this year. After doing research and looking at some traditional recipes, I realized that it wasn’t a difficult recipe to tackle after all. I simply swapped the traditional buttermilk for clabbered soy milk. I used a mixture of half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat pastry flour, as this is a mixture Fran uses a lot in her Rouxbe recipes, and I’ve found that it works really well in quick breads.

How To Clabber Nondairy Milk

Clabbering thickens and curdles milk, giving it a buttermilk-like consistency. To make clabbered milk, you just need to add vinegar or lemon juice to almond or soy milk and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes. (I use apple cider vinegar in this recipe.)

Other types of nondairy milk don’t clabber – or curdle – the same way they almond and soy milk do when the acid is added to them. The clabbered milk will look like it’s curdled or gone bad, which is what you want. It will mimic buttermilk in the recipe, which adds a lightness to the bread.

How to Make Vegan Soda Bread

This recipe only takes a few minutes of active time to prepare!

First you clabber your milk.
Next you mix all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
Then you add the clabbered milk to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
Finally, you pour the mixture into a 10-inch round baking dish and bake for 35 to 45 minutes.
You should allow your bread to cool completely before slicing it.

mixing the batter Some people like to cut a large X into their soda bread. If you’d like to, take your loaf out of the oven after about 15 minutes and use a sharp knife or kitchen sissors to cut an X into the dough. I’ve found that if you cut it too early, it won’t show on the finished loaf.

soda bread in pan I like to use a springform pan to bake my bread, because it’s super easy to get the baked bread out of the pan. If you don’t have one, you can use a cake pan, or pie pan. Soda bread is usually baked in a round dish, but you can even use a rectangle loaf pan, if you prefer.

Some things to keep in mind

Don’t over mix your batter or it could turn gummy and the resulting bread will be heavy.
Use a wooden spoon or spatula when mixing your batter, because metal will react with the baking soda.

Soda Bread Variations

You can easily customize your soda bread with these simple additions:

Add 1 cup of raisins or currants to the batter
Add 1/4 cup caraway seeds to the batter
Sprinkle 1/4 cup rolled oats to the top of the batter in the baking dish, before it’s baked.
Sprinkle 1/4 cup seeds, such as flax or sunflower, to the top of the batter in the baking dish, before it’s baked.

Enjoy a few slices with breakfast, or treat yourself to piece as an afternoon snack!

soda bread slices with butter and jam