When I couldn’t afford a $4 loaf of bread on my $10-a-day food budget, I turned to soda bread. I would make a loaf every morning, slice it, and top it with scrambled eggs, mashed avocado, or butter. I’d serve it as a partner in crime with simple salads and soups. I even used it on an episode of MasterChef (I competed on Season 3), and Gordon Ramsay loved it. This recipe is very easy to put together and incredibly budget-friendly. Get ready to put this one in heavy rotation!
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What’s Special About Soda Bread?
Soda bread is a quick bread with a hard outer crust and a dense, tight crumb. Quick breads are leavened with baking powder or soda instead of yeast. So, if you’ve had a muffin, cornbread, biscuits, or banana bread, you’ve had quick bread. Soda bread is leavened with baking soda, which gives it its namesake.
What You Need
You need just 4 ingredients to make soda bread: flour, baking soda, a little salt, and buttermilk. The baking soda reacts with the acidity of the buttermilk, creating tiny bubbles in the dough, giving soda bread its signature texture. You don’t even need to knead it. It’s so easy that I could make it with a two-year-old at my knees screaming for Yo Gabba Gabba. (If you are currently sharing space with a two-year-old, my thoughts and prayers are with you. #neveragain)
Why Don’t You Need To Knead It?
You knead bread to develop gluten strands, rubberband-like proteins that help bread rise. They create a net that traps all of the gas developed by bread made with yeast. Because soda bread is not yeasted bread, kneading it just makes it dense and hard. To develop its trademark soft crumb, you touch the dough as little as possible while shaping it. If you prefer a chewier kneaded bread texture but don’t want to put in all that work, try our easy No-Knead Bread recipe.
Where Does This Recipe Come From?
Many cultures worldwide make some form of soda bread, and it is thought to have been created by Native Americans. However, the most commonly known recipe is for Irish soda bread. It became a popular recipe in Ireland during the famine when bread had to be made from cheap ingredients: soft wheat flour, salt, baking soda, and sour milk.
What Else Can I Add To Soda Bread?
Traditionally, Irish soda bread is just four ingredients. But Irish Americans add currants or caraway seeds to the dough. You can also add a few teaspoons of citrus zest or your favorite fresh herbs. For a fun twist, try it with Everything Bagel seasoning. It’s truly a blank canvas, so don’t be scared to experiment with your favorite flavors.
What To Serve With Soda Bread
Soda bread is perfect for sopping up that last bit of sauce or stew. For a perfect pairing, check out these recipes.
Easy Soda Bread
Servings 8 slicesIngredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour ($0.27)
- 1/2 tsp baking soda ($0.01)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.06)
- 1 cup buttermilk* ($0.32)
Instructions
- Set a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat it to 450°F. Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until they are fully incorporated.
- Form a well in the center of the flour mixture and fill the well with the buttermilk.
- Use a fork to incorporate the flour into the buttermilk little by little until a thick batter forms. Use your hands to incorporate the final bits of flour and gently shape the batter into a dough. Do not overwork the dough.
- Transfer the dough to a floured work surface and gently shape it into a round 6 inches in diameter and about 1 1/2 inches thick.
- Place the dough in a Dutch oven or cast iron skillet. Use a sharp knife to cut a large x into the top of the dough.
- Bake for 10 minutes at 450°F. Then lower the oven temperature to 400°F and continue baking until the bread is golden brown and crusty on the outside, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool.
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Notes
Nutrition
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How to Make Easy Soda Bread – Step by Step Photos
Set a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat to 450°F. Mix the 2 cups of flour, the 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, and the 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a large bowl until they are fully incorporated.
Form a well in the center of the flour mixture and fill the well with the buttermilk.
Use a fork to incorporate the flour into the buttermilk little by little until a thick batter forms. Use your hands to incorporate the final bits of flour and gently shape the batter into a dough. Do not overwork the dough.
Transfer the dough to a floured work surface and gently shape it into a round 6 inches in diameter and about 1 1/2 inches thick.
Place the loaf in a Dutch oven or cast iron skillet. Use a sharp knife to cut a large x into the top of the dough.
Bake for 10 minutes at 450°F. Then lower the oven temperature to 400°F and continue baking until the bread is golden brown and crusty on the outside, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool.
Enjoy the warm, cozy soda bread with a thick smear of butter and your favorite bowl of soup!
The easiest best bread recipe, thank you.
Followed the recipe exactly. With 2 cups of flour, the dough was soupy, and once in the oven, never rose. Awful. Probably needed 4 cups of flour.
Does this recipe work with gluten-free flour?
1:1 gluten free flour usually does pretty well in recipes like this, but we haven’t specifically tried it. Would be worth a try!
I am already using three cups of flour instead of two and my dough still comes out very sticky and it’s hard to shape it, anybody have some advice for me or know what I’m doing wrong? The bread always comes out good though, I just get annoyed when I can’t get the dough off my hands 😅
It is a rather sticky dough, pouring the buttermilk slowly and useing my fork until it loosely came together,mild ball form. Think of it as a very rough or kinda loose biscuit dough. To get the dough off your hands flour them n rub together n use the ball to pick those bits up n put it on a pan. Good luck
Just made my very first loaf of bread 😊thank you so much for sharing your recipe 😄 Bread is so expensive there are days when I just have to go without 😟but never again thanks to you!!!
Sorry I may have missed this in the recipe but do you put the top on the Dutch oven or leave it off (or switch partway through)?
We didn’t cover it. :)
came here to ask the same! :)
Can I halve the recipe and make it in an air fryer? If yes, are there any adjustments to make? My air fryer only goes up to 400F
Unfortunately, we haven’t tested this recipe in an air fryer, so I can’t say if it would work or not.
I love this recipe SO much. It has everything it needs to have and nothing more. I’m still learning how to make yeast bread, but in the meantime, in addition to making a classic Irish soda bread to eat with butter and tea, I’m also using it as the general bread in my small household. Using this as a starting point, I can improv to my heart’s content (currently baking a barley flour loaf with sunflower seeds and golden flax seeds, having mixed the milk with yogurt (and a bit of vinegar just in case the yogurt wasn’t acidic enough) to add some flavor and tenderness.
I’ve done sweet cinnamon raison loaves and whole-wheat garlic loaves…. The texture isn’t the proper soda bread one, but when I want that, I can go back to this recipe’s basics and get that too.
Before I saw this, I found half a dozen recipes including butter and an egg and who knows what else, and I kept thinking, “This can’t be right!” Then I found this, and it is very, very right.
Note to the fellow parents of small children who think “sweet, I can whip this up before the baby wakes up” – even though your baking soda and baking powder may sit side by side on the shelf, which one you reach for makes a big difference. Don’t try it with baking powder, you’ll just get a brick. 🤦♀️ next time I’ll try to follow the recipe and report back.
Soda bread is definitely more dense than yeast breads, so keep that in mind!
Hey there! Recipe looks amazing and reminds me of home! I live in Colorado, so I need to make any adjustments for the high altitude?
Thanks!
Hi Sophia, unfortunately, I’m not well versed in high altitude baking, so I’m not sure. But I did find this guide for high altitude baking that might be helpful!
Could you use whole wheat flour?
You could probably substitute up to half of the flour with WW, but if you use all WW flour it will be much more heavy and dense, and you may need to increase the liquid since WW flour absorbs more than all-purpose.
This recipe was so delicious and easy to follow! Went perfectly with the roasted red pepper and tomato soup.
Thanks Meg!
I’ve been making this as written or with either cranberries or different herbs every few days for the past couple of weeks and we have thoroughly enjoyed it. My 12 year old daughter makes it also. Great simple, affordable bread.
For anyone wondering if you can make this with kefir instead of buttermilk, the answer is yes! I just made it with plain lowfat/1% kefir. I haven’t tried it with buttermilk or milk & vinegar yet, but this is good enough that I’ll probably just do it this way in the future since I always have kefir on hand.
I also cooked it in a greased Corningware French White 1.5 quart casserole dish, which worked well. Very easy and satisfying.
Excellent soda bread! Was looking for something traditional and simple and this was it. Plus, it tastes great!