Luck O' the Irish

St. Patty's Day is almost upon us, and since this year it falls the night before my 10 a.m. thesis defense (I'm not bitter or anything), I decided to celebrate a bit early this year. In an effort to stick to my resolution to make a Bon Appetit recipe each month (month 2 of following through - woo hoo!), I decided to make Irish Soda Bread. They had this great article in the magazine about traveling all over the country of Ireland in search of the perfect soda bread recipe - if you haven't read the article yet, here is a link to the winning recipe.

However, there are a few caveats to me deciding to make this bread: 1.) I am not Irish, 2.) I have never been to Ireland, and 3.) I have never tried Irish Soda Bread before. Therefore, I had no idea what the bread should taste or look like, but I didn't let that stop me. I followed the recipe to a tee and got pretty worried after I added the buttermilk and saw this much flour remaining in the mixing bowl that refused to incorporate into the dough:


But I figured that since I had come this far, I may as well bake it. Here is what the dough looked like before baking:

And here is what it looked like after baking for 40 minutes:


As you can see, to my pleasant surprise, it turned out golden brown and still tasted yummy (I am attributing this to the luck o' the Irish). It is a dense, slightly nutty flavored brown bread, that has a biscuit like texture to it. (Of course, I have no idea if it tastes like it's supposed to due to the caveats I mentioned earlier.)

However, if I were to make it again (or if you decide to try it out for yourself), I would recommend either cutting the amount of flour in the recipe by about 2 cups, or upping the amount of buttermilk by a cup so that all of the dry ingredients in the dough come together.

Happy (early) St. Patty's Day everyone! Drink a Guinness (or two or three) for me.