Shall we go back in Time?
Imagine you were in Ireland in the early about 1850’s and you had no potatoes which you were used to cooking for the main dish which provided the needed protein and vitamins for the sustenance your family needed.
You had a flour but it was a “soft wheat” flour and didn’t make a nice elastic dough ball, with the necessary gluten that made your bread dough rise nicely with your sourdough starter, and then rise even more in your Bastible pot (like a dutch oven) you could hang over your fireplace or set over coals and put some on the top of the lid.
There was a new bread you could make using bicarbonate of soda and hydrochloric acid, or sour milk even.
Here is a recipe from an 1898 English newspaper for Soda Bread.
Why can't you grow wheat in Ireland that you can make yeast breads with?
Ireland has a difficult time growing wheat that has enough protien in it because of the lack of sunshine in the summer, As one Irish farmer explained; the tall wheat stalks just fall over in the rain.
Andrew Workman can explain more
What is Soda Bread ?
What kind of Soda do you Use Soda Pop or Baking Soda ?
Baking soda is short for sodium bi-carbonate. It can be found in nature one is called Natron. Sometimes it is sold under the name Natron. Baking soda is something that is good to become aquainted with food history wise, as it has been used for so many things since ancient Egypt where it was used to dry out and preserve a deceased body.
When mixed with water it makes a good cleaner and also disinfects to some degree.
The most popular one in the US is the Arm and Hammer Baking Soda.
Is Baking Soda a Natural Ingredient?
Yes, it is from the mineral Natron also Trona, that can be mined. Probably most of the Arm and Hammer baking soda comes from Trona, Wyoming. Another form of baking soda occurs when you burn wood or plant material. If you rinse the ashes enough you end up with Potash.
What does the Soda do to make bread rise?
Bicarbonate of soda or baking soda, is a base (high ph) when mixed with an acid, like buttermilk, lemon juice it causes CO2 bubbles and that is what gets trapped in the bread to make it rise. The heat also causes the baking soda to give off CO2 but only a certain part of it.
Why Soda?
Who Figured Out the Soda Reaction?
Different cultures have discovered the many uses of sodium bicarbonate. The Native-Americas are credited with some of the first to discover that soaked ashes can make a substance that helped to to leaven their fry bread.
Can you really soak ashes and use that water to make bread.....yes you can!
The Dutch discovered the magical rising qualities when they needed to extend their poor flour. They added a chalky powder substance that had similar qualities of baking soda. When they added an acid to the flour mix like buttermilk, they noticed that the batter rose when baked!
Why the big X in the soda bread?
There are different stories behind the origin of the X (or cross) in the bread. Some say it was just a way to make a natural separation so that each person could easily break off a triangle. Others say that it is a response to a superstition. If you cut the cross or x, then if there are any evil spirits they won’t get trapped inside of the bread. There was also a belief that the cross being a religious symbol would scare away any evil spirits. This may seem like silly superstition to us in this scientific day and age, but when soda bread was getting started these superstations were often thought of as fact.
Is Ireland the only place famous for making soda bread?
In England and other European countries soda-bread was very popular in the later part of the 1800’s and early 1900’s. It may have been because yeast was hard to come by in the countries where wheat was plentiful.
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