American Style Irish Soda Bread

Keeping with the theme of the week, Bread baking, today I have a quick bread recipe that I made from the King Arthur Catalog. This is American version of Irish Soda bread. Traditional Irish soda breads are made of flour, baking soda, salt and buttermilk. This version is slightly sweeter than the original, but not cloyingly sweet. It has currants/ raisins that gives a nice mild sweetness to the bread. I'm going to keep the post short since we are going back home this weekend and it's going to be a hectic day tomorrow with packing. Will miss home and mom. Hopefully I can come back real soon.


Ingredients: All purpose flour - 3cups Baking powder - 1tbsp Baking Soda - ¼tsp
Salt - ¾tsp
Sugar - ½cup
Raisins/ Currants - 1cup
Caraway Seeds - 1tbsp (optional)
Egg - 1, large (or 1tbsp egg replacer whisked with 3tbsp water)
Buttermilk - 1¾cup (use 1cup milk+¾cup yogurt or sour cream instead)
Butter - 4tbsp, melted
For Topping:
Milk - 1tbsp
Turbinado sugar - 1tbsp
Method:

• Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly grease a 9"x5" loaf pan.
• In a large bowl, combine all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar and currants/ raisins and caraway seeds.
• In a separate bowl, whisk egg into buttermilk. 
• Quickly and gently stir in the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
• Stir in the melted butter.
• Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Drizzle the milk over the batter and sprinkle with turbinado sugar.
• Bake for 50 minutes ~ 1hour or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean.
• Let the bread cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning it out onto the wire rack to cool completely. Slice when cooled and store at room temperature.

Linking this to Valli's 'Cooking from Cookbook Challenge -- August: Week 2'.