Grandma’s Authentic Irish Soda Bread Recipe

March 7, 2023 Family Fun, Food, Winter

One of the best ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day is to bake some authentic Irish Soda Bread!

Here is a relatively simple but totally authentic Irish Soda Bread recipe. I love it toasted with some butter spread over the slice. It’s just delicious!

May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past. -Irish Proverb

I didn’t know my grandmother, she passed away before I was born, but I know her Irish Soda Bread recipe. My mother started making it quite a bit within the last 15 years and it’s a truly great recipe.

My greatgrandmother Agnes (middle) with her sisters. She immigrated to the United States in 1911

It’s wonderful to know that a family recipe can keep a memory alive or let a grandchild, me, imagine the grandmother that she never met baking in a little New York City apartment kitchen. It’s made with simple pantry ingredients so it doesn’t take a huge grocery haul to get it done.

My grandmother Alice on a NYC rooftop, ~1935

My grandmother is the daughter of Irish immigrants, my son’s middle name is Cavan – the town where my immigrant great-grandfather was born. We love keeping traditions alive by baking this bread. You can eat it for a week, toasting it up and adding butter (real butter!!).

My mother 2006 Remnants of her grandmother’s Agnes’ cottage called Corranmore in Kiltyclogher, Ireland

This heritage is important to my family, particularly my mother, and food, this recipe, is her way of keeping it with us. Recipes tend to live on through the women in a family and this one will live on in ours. I will bake it with my daughter on St. Patrick’s Day and remind my children about their history from Ireland to New York and now in Kentucky. Enjoy this wonderful authentic Irish Soda Bread Recipe!

Grandmother Alice’s Irish Soda Bread Recipe – tweaked by my mother, Kathleen.

Ingredients

4 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup raisins (I use more)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pint of sour cream
3 eggs & some milk

Mix all dry ingredients together then add eggs and sour cream
Gradually add a very small amount of milk until the batter is wet but tacky. You might not need milk.

For the pan, my mother uses a large springform pan. Grandmother Alice used to bake it in a cast iron skillet in the oven. Take your pick!

Grease the pan and bake at 350 for approx. 40 to 45 minutes. Check center of bread with knife or toothpick. If knife comes out clean, it is done. Spread a pat of butter over top of bread while hot. Wrap in terry towel while hot and let cool on the counter.

Serve warm or toasted with your favorite spread – salted butter is perfect.

In loving memory of my mother, Kathleen.