Rye soda bread – a recipe

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This rye soda bread comes from Heidi Swanson, of the 101 Cookbooks blog. I love Heidi’s blog and have both of her cookbooks that I am trying to use more often. My preferred of her two is the second one, Super Natural Everyday, which this recipe comes from.

I love bread, but bread doesn’t often love me. Which is very sad.

This recipe attracted me because of the rye flour, as well as its ease to bake. All cooked in under an hour. From start to finish. No yeast = no proofing time.

Rye soda bread
Recipe by Heidi Swanson

What you need:

• 275g rye flour – I milled my own in my Thermomix from rye kernels
• 225 bakers flour (plain flour), plus a bit extra for kneading
• 1 3/4 teaspoon bi-carb soda (baking soda – NOT baking powder)
• 1 1/4 teaspoon salt (I use Celtic sea salt)
• 475 ml buttermilk

What you do:

• Preheat your oven to 205c, with the rack in the middle of the oven
• Put the flours, salt, bicarb into a large bowl and stir to mix. Create a well and pour in the buttermilk.
• Stir until the mix comes together into a dough, then tip onto a floured bench and knead until the dough comes together. My dough was quite wet so make sure you flour your hands well too. You shouldn’t need to knead for more than about 30 seconds.
• Shape the dough into a round, flattish ball shape and place on a floured baking tray. Make four slashes in the dough (cutting about halfway through) so you have eight segments. Bake for about 45 minutes until a hard crust forms and the bread is cooked through. It will sound hollow when you knock on the base.
• Cool on a wire rack.

I ate one piece with beautiful butter, a second with soft and slightly over-ripe camembert, and a third piece (not three segments!) with avocado and ham. Yes, I was a greedy pig. But it was sensational!

This will be baked again and again. Quick and simple. Next time I might try it in a loaf tin so  I can more easily slice it.

And next time I’m definitely going to add some caraway seeds. YUM!

Do you bake bread? What’s your favourite type?