This week at Great British Bake Off is bread week and the signature challenge is soda bread. I’ve tasted shop-bought soda bread, I liked it, but not enough to buy lots of it. As I prefer homemade bread, I thought it might be different if I bake it myself.

Yesterday I’ve baked it and it turned out delicious. Hubby loved it and he is not particularly found of soda bread. I made a wholemeal and oats soda bread because I wanted to keep it simple. Next time I’m thinking of baking a caramelized shallots soda bread and I think I will bake it these days.

Ingredients for a big loaf of Wholemeal oaty soda bread:

– 275g plain white flour
– 250g plain wholemeal flour
– 140g oats
– 500ml buttermilk
– 30g butter
– 1 teaspoon of sea salt
– 1 teaspoon and a quarter of bicarbonate of soda

Start by heating the oven at 200C/180C fan. Mix the white and the wholemeal flour with the bicarbonate and salt. Add the softened butter and rub it in with the fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the oats on top of the dry ingredients.

Make a well in the middle of the bowl and pour the buttermilk. Start mixing the dough with a spoon. If it’s difficult to incorporate all, flip the dough onto the lightly floured worktop and incorporate by hand. The dough doesn’t have to be kneaded, so don’t over do it.

This is how the dough looks like. It doesn’t have to be a perfect smooth round shape, like it suppose to in other types of bread.

Put the loaf on a baking parchment and flatten it with the hands until is 3-4 cm tall. With a table knife cut a cross on top of the bread and dust it with flour.

Bake it for 35 minutes, it should sound hollow when is tapped. Leave it on a cooling rack for 15 minutes and it’s ready to be served.

I hope you liked my recipe and if you bake along, please join the linky, I would love to see your bakes. I talked with another baker and I’ve decided to make the linkies 2 days longer, to allow extra time for those who are baking the challenges after the show.