Irish Soda Bread, from my little Italian Nana

Somewhere in the middle of last week, I got a hankering for my Nana’s Irish Soda Bread. 

My attempt at recreating Nana's Irish soda bread

Nana is one of the reasons I love food so much.  My best and earliest memories include food at Nana and Nanu’s house: Sunday macaroni and meatball dinners, perfectly iced Easter cookies, and escarole and bean soup. 


In April she'll turn 88 years young but stopped cooking and baking years ago.  My mom and aunts and cousins are all amazing cooks and have filled the void with their own mouthwatering versions of some of Nana's classics.  But since I moved to Virginia seven years ago, our little family only gets to partake when we're back in Massachusetts every few months.  


So I've tried to keep some of those food memories fresh here in NoVA, recreating Nana's dishes and passing on the "love is food, food is love" philosophy to my own children.  Try as I might, my attempts to replicate her dishes are never quite successful.  Still, I enjoy the opportunity to engage in this long-distance re-connection with the roots of my obsession with food. 


Even though my mom's side of my family is Italian, my Nana would make an Irish Soda Bread every March for St. Patrick's Day without fail.  My Nana grew up in Watertown, MA, at a time when the Italians and Irish had their share of friction, to put it euphemistically.  So this ritual of making Irish Soda Bread was always a little surprising, but who was I to question the annual appearance of this tasty treat?


I brought the Little Ones to buy some Irish soda bread at Great Harvest Bread Company and it was good.  It was REALLY good.  We purchased it fresh from the oven and the LOs watched as I gobbled a warm slice down, barely able to express how delicious it was, my mouth was so full.  Every mouthful was pure heaven.  

GHBC's version of Irish Soda Bread...so very delicious!

As good as it was, it wasn't the same as Nana's.  It was definitely more bread-y (which makes sense, since they're a bread company) while Nana's was more breakfast biscuit-y (kind of sweet, with a savory hint from the caraway seeds, and crumbly). 


I asked my mom to email me Nana's recipe for Irish Soda Bread.  I found a version online from Simply Recipes, and my mother-in-law was sweet enough to email me a recipe she'd received from a friends years ago.  But I was determined to try Nana's recipe to recapture the memory of eating it at her kitchen table when I was a kid.  


I believe this recipe comes from her Maria Montessori Lodge cookbook, something I hope to one day inherit (if I don't have to fight my relatives for it). I decided I was going to make this on my own, so I waited until the Bigger One had gone off to afternoon preschool and the Littler One was napping.  I gathered my ingredients and began the joyful process of baking without little hands dusting my floors with flour.

Caraway seeds were not as hard to find as I expected.  I didn't realize they're right there in the supermarket with the spices!

Nana's Irish Soda Bread


Ingredients:
4 c. flour
1 c. raisins
3/4 c. shortening (1/4 c. spry, the rest oleo)
1 c. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. caraway seeds (optional)
1 egg
1 c. milk


Blend together flour and shortening until there are no lumps.  Add sugar, baking powder, salt, raisins, and caraway seeds.  Mix thoroughly.  Beat together egg and milk and add dry ingredients to form a soft dough.  Place dough on floured board and knead lightly.  Form dough into two round cakes and place each on a floured pie plate.  Trace the sign of the cross on the top of each cake with a knife.  Bake in a very hot oven 500 degrees for 5 minutes, then reduce heat to 450 degrees and bake 10 minutes.  Reduce heat again to 350 degrees and bake 20 minutes.  Makes 2 cakes.

It was not as hard to put together as I expected.  I did have to ask my mom what spry and oleo were.  Spry apparently means Crisco and oleo is margarine.   I also referred to the online recipe from Simply Recipes for some guidance.  It says that the dough should be a little shaggy and not perfectly blended before going into the oven.  That was comforting to read, since my dough was very shaggy-looking!

Shaggy dough

I loved the direction to "trace the sign of the cross" on top of the dough.  I could just imagine my devout little Nana executing this step with such solemnity.  She still watches the Mass on TV every morning!


Of course, I wondered about the fact that this recipe uses baking powder instead of baking soda, when it's a "soda bread".  But I plowed ahead, putting my faith in the recipe and its ability to produce something similar to what I remembered.


I was not disappointed.  The smell, the taste and even the look (sort of) resembled my Nana's Irish Soda Bread.  As I inhaled the warm, sweet scent, I felt a little closer to my Nana and her kitchen where I spent many hours of my childhood.  


The Carnivore loved it.  In fact, we've both been picking at it this week...and as you can imagine, oleo and spry are not conducive to weight loss!!  The boys seemed to prefer the Great Harvest Bread Company version.  It's an acquired taste, I think, and hopefully over the years they'll grow to enjoy it as much as I did as a child.


My only regret was that I wasn't able to sit down at her table with her and offer her a slice of my bread.  Fortunately, we're heading up there in a couple of weeks to visit.  While everyone will have moved on from St. Patrick's Day treats, I look forward to making some new food memories with Nana and the rest of my Massachusetts clan.  


Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone!  Thanks for reading!


For more adventures in eating, like my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PaperPlacemats.