In Ireland we do not wait around for our bread to rise and you don't have to either. I'm Gemma Stafford, a professional chef with over 20 years experience and when it comes to baking in Ireland simplicity is key. No yeast, no kneading, just mix it up and into the oven in five minutes. So this Irish bread is a little bit different than a traditional Irish soda bread and soda being the key word there. Irish soda bread is buttermilk and baking soda. This bread is still a quick bread, no yeast, very fast to pull together but it is milk and baking powder and almost a little bit even more accessible because not everybody always has buttermilk but you nearly always have milk. So this is how you're going to make it.

It's so simple. We're going to start out with some white all-purpose flour. Even though this is a bread you do not want bread flour. All-purpose is the perfect amount of protein in the flour to give you the texture that you want. So yes this is a brown bread but here's the thing when I make brown bread I never use 100% whole wheat flour. I always cut it with white flour so I do equal amounts roughly of white flour and whole wheat flour. If you do 100% whole wheat flour it'll be very heavy and dense. Mixing with white makes it that bit lighter so you will get a lovely wheaty brown bread with this but that white flour just lightens everything up. Now for this recipe I do write fine whole wheat flour and I'll tell you why.

I live in Los Angeles. I don't live in Wexford anymore and in LA all I can get is fine whole wheat flour. We don't have the variety like we do at home in Ireland. So whichever country you are try and get the most finely ground flour as possible to make this bread work. My mum in Ireland gets these beautiful stone ground coarse, wheaty flours and I just can't get those here but this is something that you can easily find in most supermarkets. So to this bread I like to add a few seeds. Not only does it add color and flavor but also like extra nutrients. So in this bowl I have sunflower, papitas, I've got some sesame seeds in there. You can even do chia seeds or poppy seeds if you want. I have to say though I still

stay away from poppy seeds especially if I'm eating something in public because it always gets stuck in my teeth but you do you. Whatever you like. I'm gonna mix those in there. If you want to leave out the seeds you don't have any to hand that's totally fine. If seeds are not your thing and you'd prefer to have a loaf with like maybe some nuts and some fruit in it like raisins that would be absolutely fine. Just replace that quantity. So next we're going to add in two things that I don't use very often but really add a lot of nutrients to this bread. Here I have some bran. Now the bran is very rich in nutrients. It's the

outer layer of a husk of wheat and it's what's removed to make white flour. So this has all the good stuff in it. So we're going to add that in there. If you don't have that you can sub it for ground flaxseed. That's totally fine. Next I'm going to add in wheat germ. Now this is the center of the wheat husk. Also nutrient rich and often removed. So we're going to add those back in here. So let me give you a tip about those ingredients and the whole wheat flour. It is high in fat and when something is high in fat if it hangs out too long at room temperature it can go rancid. So to make those last longer keep them in your fridge or even in your freezer and they will last a long time. Keeping them out at room

temperature they can go rancid and it's such a shame because they have to go in the bin there and they're expensive ingredients. So that's just my tip. Always keep those in the fridge or freezer. All these are high in unsaturated fats which do break down over time and how you'll know they're gone bad. If you kind of smell a sour like oil gone bad kind of smell then they're done. Our next ingredient to leaven our bread is baking powder and of course a good pinch of salt. Now just mix those ingredients together. In true Irish fashion this is a quick bread that is made in one bowl in five minutes. That's why I call it the five minute

Irish bread. Now let's talk liquid for this bread. Here I have milk. Use whole fat milk because more fat more flavor. A lower like one or two percent will work but whole milk is really great to bake with. So into that I added in a little bit of treacle. What we call in Ireland treacle. In America we call it molasses. So if you don't have molasses you can always use honey but if you want to make some molasses and have it in your cupboard I've got a fantastic recipe and all it is simmering down some brown sugar and it's a fantastic substitute and it lasts for ages in your cupboard. Into the milk I'm going to add an egg. In Ireland we get the most gorgeous eggs that are orange in the center. Like the yolk is big and it

is bright orange. I absolutely love it. Every time I go home and I see it's like gosh I forget what beautiful eggs we have and they make like jammy scrambled eggs. It's like the best. Into this to add a little bit of fat into our bread I'm going to add in some melted butter. I'm gonna whisk those ingredients together. We're making a bread like this or scones or even cakes and cupcakes. Don't forget that old step that we learned which is mix all your wet ingredients together, mix your dry ingredients together then combine so you're not over mixing in the bowl. The one secret about this Irish bread is to mix until just combined. Often sometimes Irish bread can seem heavy or dense and that can be true. It depends on who made it. For you to make

this bread really successfully just combine the ingredients until you can't see any more flour and then stop mixing. So the key to an Irish bread just like this is minimal mixing. As you can see the dough is very soft. It is not meant to be shaped. It has to go into a pan. It's not like traditional Irish soda bread that you can push into around just like that. It's very soft. So when you make a quick bread you do have to move fast because once the liquid meets the baking powder it starts to activate. So get it into your pan. Have your pan ready. This is my mum's trick for breads and scones. Any bit of liquid left just to kind of glaze the top. Also to flatten out.

You know some doughs can be a little bit spiky and they bake spiky. Flatten out any of those with whatever is left over. No need to crack a whole egg. Let's not get crazy now. We have good leftover stuff in there. Now here's a trick that I don't know where I learned this trick. Probably the internet. But to get a uniformed looking bread with that lovely opening down the middle. When your dough is raw and this works by the way for pound cakes. Get your knife. Do a big deep cut down the middle into the dough. Deep. Right down the middle. When it bakes hopefully it'll burst open and you'll have that lovely dome right in the center. That's my oven pinging. So let's get it into the oven. So you want to bake your Irish bread at 350 degrees

Fahrenheit. 180 degrees Celsius. For around an hour it does take a lot of time. It's a heavy loaf. While it's baking I thought we would get to some hotline questions. I've got some really great ones this week about Irish bread. One person asked can you freeze this bread and the answer is yes. It freezes really well. What I like to do is I bake it. I slice it and I freeze the slices and I keep them all in a bread bag and that just means I can take out toast whenever I need it and it's really handy. Another question was how to incorporate cheese into the dough and somebody else actually asked me this week too.

Grate a hard cheese. Don't use the soft cheese. Grate a hard cheese like cheddar and mix it into your dry ingredients. Don't go crazy but in this bread you could definitely put in I'd say like a half to three quarters of a cup of grated cheese and it'd be absolutely delicious. Next question is why was my bread dense? Now this is so common. It's just over mixing. I know we feel the urge to keep on mixing but you just have to stop. Once the dough settles in the pan all those like lumps and everything will work themselves out and you'll end up with a lighter bread.

Lastly this is a great one to end on. Hooked by Megs asked on YouTube can I substitute the whole wheat flour for rye flour? I'm going to let you know from my experience I have not had good luck substituting whole wheat flour for rye flour. I find it ends up being incredibly heavy. If you have experienced an experiment I would say stick to a fine whole wheat flour that still is very nutrient heavy and delicious. Okay that's it. The longest part of this bread is actually the baking. It really does come together in five minutes. In our Lidar cuisine it's about ease. It's about accessibility.

It's about no fuss no frills but that does not mean that they don't yield amazing results. They really do from our ingredients to the way that we make things. The years of tradition pass down from family to family baker to baker. Simple, delicious, good for you, good for your heart, good for your soul. At home we would have served ours with Irish butter and had it for sandwiches or with a side of soup. There's no wrong way to serve this bread and this vegetable soup is the exact recipe my mum showed me how to make when I was a young girl and I still make it to this day and I make it from my son. I hope you enjoyed me sharing a little bit of my culture with you because I definitely enjoyed it. I love to do Irish recipes and

tell you all about them. Thank you so much for watching. I'll be back here again next week same time same place with a brand new recipe.