Recipe For Soda Bread ?

Thanks or all the great recipe's that have been e-mailed to me :-)

Question # 1 :

I am not really on a 'No Carb' diet (Atkins-Zone etc) but I am trying to cut back drastically on my 'Processed, Bleached' flours.

If I want to cook somthing that is 'Whole Wheat', why must I use White (regular) flour, or DO I ? Can I use ALL whole wheat ?

Question # 2 :

I dont even have a full size oven at my current place, just a Toaster Oven, but so far its been no problem for anything I have wanted to cook.

Should I cut the ingredients by 1 / 2 or just make 2 batches ? I guess my main question would be if the ingredients will be okay just sitting there for 45 minutes - 1 hour while the other 1 / 2 is cooking or will it turn 'Yucky' (un-usable) ?

Question # 3 :

Besides Soda Bread, what I am interested in most is 'Quick' (and Healthy) cooking braeds...I.E. 100 % Whole Wheat Flat-Breads, Muffins etc. Any other suggestions ?

In short...Even after a big, thick, juicy steak and veggies, I just do NOT feel complete unless I have a tasty slice of bread, and I would like to do t as healthy as possible. From what I understand,

100 % whole wheat would qualify as your 'Good Carbs'. (?)

Thanks again.

Chris Mc 3

Oh...One more thing...(sorry)...Can I cook it up seperate like 'Muffins' or must I do it all together in the traditional 'Loaf' style ?

Thanks in advance.

Chris Mc 3

It's not necessary to use white flour, not for soda bread, not for most kinds of bread. Cakes are very different, and I wouldn't recommend assuming that you can substitute there, but you can use whole wheat in most other recipes. Usually you need to increase the amount of liquid with whole wheat, because it will absorb considerably more. Typically I add about 6/5 the liquid amount specified for a recipe calling for white flour.

For soda bread, if you're using whole wheat, you'll get much better results if you use whole wheat pastry flour, instead of all-purpose whole wheat or bread flour. In fact, this is true of most of the "quick breads" - i.e. those that don't use yeast - if you use one of the high-protein flours, the result with quick breads is likely to be a lead brick.

Congratulations! A far better and more versatile choice than the microwave oven which so many people seem to have, faced with a no-range situation. I'm sure you're discovering the extraordinary utility of the toaster oven every day.

With soda bread, the answer is *definitely* cut the ingredients in half. Letting things sit around for considerable time with soda bread is a disaster, because the soda reaction will be completely spent by the time it gets into the oven, which means no rise, and a leaden lump. With breads, it works like this. Things that use yeast will be fine divided into 2 batches

- the extra time spent sitting around will do almost no harm. Things that use baking powder will be OK to divide if the baking powder is double- acting, useless if it's single-acting. Things that use baking soda only must be cut in half if the recipe yields too much. One exception is dense cookies, which usually still come out OK even if they only had baking soda.

Also, things that use large amounts of butter will usually improve if you stick the second batch in the refrigerator - in fact, that second batch may turn out better than the first! Usually butter-heavy recipes rely on the properties of melting butter during the baking process, so that time spent in the fridge helps to resolidify the butter and make it that much better.

Baked goods that require beaten egg whites will usually deteriorate after an hour spent sitting around before baking. Sometimes the deterioration isn't critical, but with things for which maximum volume is essential, such as angel food cake or souffle, you can't let them sit. You can stabilize egg whites for noncritical stuff by adding a small amount of cream of tartar.

...

With soda bread, you can do it in 2 traditional ways. The first is "cake", which is baked as one big "loaf" - a round hemisphere slashed with a cross on top. The second is "farl" which you don't bake per se, you "fry" To make farl, instead of shaping the dough into a hemisphere, you roll it out into a thick (1" or so) circle. Then you cut up the circle into individual wedges. Then you heat a heavy cast-iron skillet until it is very hot, without any oil in it, and then set the wedges - "farls" in the skillet. You cook them long enough to get reasonably brown on the bottom, flip, brown again, and serve. Doing farl is a great option if you want individual portions rather than a big loaf.

Most other quick breads you can do like muffins with minimal difficulty. You'll need to cut back on the baking time dramatically, because of the smaller size.

I sense that you feel bread and/or carbs in general lean towards the "unhealthy". Is there any specific reason you believe this? There's nothing wrong with eating some carbs, no matter what Dr. Atkins might have said. In fact, given that you don't feel satisfied without them, I suspect your metabolism may be geared towards carbs anyway, i.e. that it may be

*unhealthy* for you to avoid them. Note this is not a professional medical opinion in any way.

IMHO definitions of "good" and "bad" entirely miss the point of good nutrition. The way I look at it, there are 4 main points of "healthy eating":

1) Everything in moderation; 2) Listen to what your body tells you; 3) Get enough of the basic nutrients; 4) Avoid anything artificial.

#'s 1 and 2 are where a lot of people fall down. For instance, it's common to vilify saturated fat. Well, look at principle #1. Yes, eating a stick of butter a day probably carries significant risks. No, having a couple of tablespoons of it probably isn't going to kill you. In contrast, eating an extra serving a day of broccoli is probably a good idea. Giving up bread altogether in order to have more broccoli is probably a bad one.

Now look at #2. How do you *feel* after a large steak? Heavy, lethargic, and sleepy? Or energized, powerful, alert? If the first, then you might consider cutting back on the meat. If the second, adding more meat to the diet could well be wise. Are there vegetables you dislike the taste of, give you gas, and don't really make you feel any better? Probably indicates you should stay away from those vegetables.

I hate to condense nutrition down to such a simplified, "sound bite" description, however. I recommend you get Dr. Elson Haas' authoritative reference, "Staying Healthy With Nutrition" - an exhaustive book on nutrition, written by an expert, with thankfully only moderate bias, and very gratifyingly free of the sound bite/magic-bullet viewpoints on nutrition that you find in so many books today.

Thanks for all the response, especially those who took time to e-mail me personally, I do appreciate it.

Havnt had time to experiment with any of the recipes yet, but planning on it tomorrow. Wish me luck,

Chris Mc 3

PS : If any one can help me out with this question...Why do all (most ?) of the recipes for 'Whole Wheat' bread call for at least some regular (or All Purpose) flour...I.E...3 cups whole wheat, 1 cup all purpose flour...?

Some one wrote and said no, you dont absolutely have to, just substitute the 1 cup regular (or All Purpose) flour for whole wheat, but it may not turn out as good.

I guess understanding why the recipe calls for 'White' flour in a 'Whole Wheat' recipe in the first place might better help me decide whether to leave it in or out. (?)

Whole wheat flour is 'heavier' than white flour, and it rises slower. If you were making yeast bread, you could use all whole wheat flour, but a soda bread needs to rise faster than a yeast bread.

You could try making a loaf of soda bread using just whole wheat flour, but it will be even denser than the standard (3C whole wheat,

1C white) soda bread.

jenn

-- Jenn Ridley snipped-for-privacy@chartermi.net

being WW, the bran in it also cuts the gluten strands... making it harder to successfully 'rise'

--Shiva--