Soda Bread
INGREDIENTS. - To every 2 lbs. of flour allow 1 teaspoonful of tartaric acid, 1 teaspoonful of salt, 1 teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, 2 breakfastcupfuls of cold milk. Let the tartaric acid and salt be reduced to the finest possible powder; then mix them well with the flour. Dissolve the soda in the milk, and pour it several times from one basin to another, before adding it to the flour. Work the whole quickly into a light dough, divide it into 2 loaves, and put them into a well-heated oven immediately, and bake for an hour. Sour milk or buttermilk may be used, but then a little less acid will be needed.
TIME. -1 hour. - Soda Cake.
INGREDIENTS for moderate-sized cake. lb. of butter, 1 lb. of flour, 1/2 lb. of currants, 1/2 lb. of moist sugar, 1 teacupful of milk, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoonful of carbonate of soda. AVERAGE Cost, 1s. 2d.
Rub the butter into the flour, add the currants and sugar, and mix these ingredients well together. Whisk the eggs. well, stir them to the flour, &c., with the milk, in which the soda should be pre- Iviously dissolved, and beat the whole up SOLE OR COD PIE. together with a wooden spoon or beater.
Divide the dough into two pieces, put them into buttered moulds or cake-tins, and bake in a moderate oven for nearly an hour. The mixture must be extremely well beaten up, and not allowed to stand after the soda is added to it, but must be placed in the oven immediately. Great care must also be taken that the cakes are quite done through, which may be ascer tained by thrusting a knife into the middle of them: if the blade looks bright when withdrawn they are done. If the tops acquire too much colour before the inside is sufficiently baked, cover them over with a piece of clean white paper, to prevent them from burning.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A pre-baking-powder quick bread: the tartaric acid and bicarbonate of soda are kept apart until the last moment, so the gas is released in the oven rather than in the bowl. Everything hinges on speed once the milk meets the flour.
- Work fast, bake at onceTartaric acid reacts with soda immediately in the presence of liquid, with no second lift from heat as modern double-acting baking powder gives. Mix to a shaggy dough in under a minute, shape, and get it into an already hot oven.
- Oven temperatureBeeton specifies only a "well-heated" oven; for bread that is usually read as around 425F/220C. If the crust colours too fast over the full hour, the heat can be dropped to about 375F/190C after the first 15 minutes.
- BreakfastcupfulA Victorian breakfastcup is usually reckoned at about 10 imperial fl oz, so 2 breakfastcupfuls is roughly 2 1/2 US cups (about 570 ml). Against 2 lb (900 g) of flour that is a firm dough; add milk a spoonful at a time if the flour will not come together.
- Carbonate of soda and tartaric acid"Carbonate of soda" in Victorian cookery means bicarbonate of soda, sold in the US as baking soda (sodium carbonate proper is washing soda, not a baking ingredient). Powdered tartaric acid is still sold for baking and brewing; cream of tartar can stand in but is much weaker by weight, needing roughly twice as much.
- Sift both, thoroughlyThe instruction to reduce the acid and salt to the finest powder and mix them right through the flour is not fussiness: where the acid is not evenly spread, the soda goes unneutralised and those patches taste soapy or bitter.
- If using buttermilk or sour milkSoured dairy supplies its own acid, which is why the recipe says a little less tartaric acid will be needed. With a sharp buttermilk you may be able to leave the added acid out altogether; too much total acid for the soda present tastes sharp and rises poorly.
- Shaping and testingTwo round loaves of about 1 1/2 lb each, cut a deep cross in the top so the centre cooks through. They are done at an internal temperature of 205-210F/96-99C, or when the base sounds hollow.
- EatingSoda bread stales within hours; it is at its best warm on the day it is baked, and good toasted the next. It does not keep like a yeasted loaf.
Bicarbonate of soda became cheaper and more widely available in British and Irish kitchens over the first half of the nineteenth century, and quick breads leavened with it suited households with no yeast and no time for a long rise. Beeton's version is a transitional form: soda and a separate acid weighed out by the cook rather than bought ready-mixed, at a period when commercial baking powders were still fairly new. The note that sour milk or buttermilk may be used points to the older practice associated with Ireland and northern England, where the acid came free with the dairying and the loaf was simply flour, soda, salt and whatever soured milk was to hand.