Tuesdays with Dorie - Irish Soda Bread

St. Paddy's Day finally arrived!  I had been anticipating this holiday for weeks so I could make Irish soda bread to go with the traditional corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots.  Since I'd never made soda bread before and simple recipes with just a few ingredients are often deceiving, I did a little research here and here.  Thanks to Galletista for providing the Epicurious link at the Tuesday's with Dorie Blog Roll where you can find links to the other TWD-BWJ blogs.

This bread is so simple and delicious I can't believe I haven't made it before.  You can see Marion Cunningham making soda bread with Julia Child here.  It takes just a few minutes to assemble and mix the ingredients and minimum handling to shape it.  No special pans needed...it can be baked in a pie plate.  The Irish peasants, who didn't have ovens, cooked theirs in cast iron pots called bastibles over an open turf fire.  The ingredients are things they would have had and could afford; wheat they had grown themselves for the flour, buttermilk left over from making butter, bread soda, and salt.

Julia's White Loaves Redux and my favorite soup ...

BRRRR...the temperature this morning in north Florida was in the low thirties, which for us is pretty darn cold.  This Florida girl doesn't like cold weather, so when the temperature drops I go into hibernation.  That means comfort foods...warm soups, homemade bread, braised meats, stews, and rich desserts.  The TV weather guys and gals are saying this little cold snap will last a few days, so I decided to make my favorite Curried Zucchini Soup.  I first had this soup in a local cafe on a cold afternoon and was instantly hooked.  It's warm, creamy and satisfying while at the same time light.  Thanks to Google, I had a recipe 5 minutes after I got home.  Martha Stewart gets the credit for this one and no surpise that it costs only about $.65 per serving, takes all of 10 minutes prep time, 20 minutes cooking time, and a few minutes to blend ...et voila! it's ready to eat.  The best part...it's really low calorie.  Add some homemade bread and a salad and you have a perfect lunch.  Also a great way to use up all that extra zucchini from your summer garden.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Julia's White Loaves....

I had forgotten how much fun it was to bake bread.  When my children were small (I'm gonna age myself here) and before there were so many places where you could get good  bread, I spent a couple of years baking bread every weekend.  I mean I was a serious bread baker....I bought flour in 25 lb. sacks from the local health food store and wore out my copies of Beard on Bread and Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book and was making whole wheat, rye and pumpernickel.  I checked out every book the local public library had about bread baking.  Somewhere life got in the way and I stopped. Imagine my delight when I read that the first recipe chosen for TWD BWJ was Julia's White Loaves.....so I rolled up my sleeves and got started...

I guess by now you've figured out how this blog got it's name.  Except for one other small bit of counter space, this is the sum total of my work space.  This recipe, which can be found here, worked great with my KitchenAid Professional 600 stand mixer.