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Soda Bread
Mix thoroughly equal parts of tartaric acid and carbonate of soda, and put the mixture aside to be used as required. Dissolve a tea-spoonful of the powder and a pinch of salt in a breakfast-cupful of milk, and stir the liquor into a pound of flour. Knead the dough till it is smooth and light, put it into a tin, and bake the loaf in a brisk oven. Sometimes sour milk or buttermilk is used instead of sweet milk, and then a smaller proportion of tartaric acid is required. Time to bake, about an hour. Probable cost, 3d. for a loaf this size.
This is a recipe for homemade baking powder as much as for bread: the cook mixes her own raising powder in bulk, then uses a spoonful at a time. Two things need adjusting for a modern kitchen — the handling of the dough and the length of the bake.
- Work fast, and barely kneadTartaric acid is a fast-acting leavener that reacts the moment it meets the wet flour, with no second lift in the oven. Bring the dough together in under a minute and get it into the tin immediately; the instruction to knead "till it is smooth and light" will knock the gas out and toughen the crumb, which is why modern soda breads are handled as little as possible.
- Carbonate of sodaIn Victorian cookery books this usually means sodium bicarbonate — ordinary baking soda. It is not washing soda (sodium carbonate), which is caustic and must never be eaten.
- The powder itselfEqual weights of tartaric acid and bicarbonate of soda is close to a neutral balance and gives a workable single-acting baking powder. Commercial baking powder contains starch as a filler and is generally double-acting; if substituting, use about 2 to 3 teaspoons to the pound of flour.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly half an Imperial pint, about 10 fl oz — call it 1¼ US cups or 280 ml. A pound of flour is about 3½ cups. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky, not firm.
- Brisk ovenBrisk means roughly 400–425°F (200–220°C). Keep to the lower end for a tin loaf so the crust does not set before the centre cooks.
- The hour is too longA one-pound tin loaf at that heat is likely done in 35 to 45 minutes; an hour risks drying it out. Bake until the crust is deep brown and the internal temperature reaches about 200°F (93°C).
- The buttermilk versionSour milk or buttermilk supplies its own acid, so cut the tartaric acid sharply — with true buttermilk you can use plain bicarbonate alone, about a level teaspoon to the pound of flour. Modern cultured buttermilk is acidic enough to work this way.
- YieldOne small loaf. Soda bread stales within a day; it is at its best within a few hours of baking, and toasts well thereafter.
Soda bread belongs to the moment in the nineteenth century when chemical leavening became cheap enough for domestic use, and it spread fastest where households had no reliable access to brewer's or baker's yeast and where the local flour was soft and low in gluten — conditions that describe rural Ireland particularly well. Bicarbonate of soda became widely available in Britain around the middle of the century, and tartaric acid, a by-product of winemaking, was sold by chemists and grocers alongside it; ready-mixed baking powders were on the market by mid-century, but as this entry shows, thrifty cooks kept blending their own. The 'probable cost' of threepence a loaf reflects a house style of costing almost every dish, so that a household could weigh it against the alternatives — here, against a yeast loaf that required hours of proving and a warm corner to prove it in.