Inspiration: Scratch-made soda bread doesn’t hold the same level of malevolence that madeleines once held for me, but in the past, I’ve struggled to produce this style of bread. My efforts looked okay as I mixed them up, and they smelled delicious as they baked….but the end product was less than stellar. 

The fruit caught in the oven, the center was underdone, and the texture was wildly tight. But since those dark, dark days, I’ve acquired a reliable thermometer to test the doneness, learned that after adding the buttermilk to the dry ingredients, you must not tarry in getting the dough into the oven and that I didn’t need to knead the dough the way I did my regular sandwich loaf. With these tidbits of knowledge tucked away in the back of my brain, when I spotted the recipe for a Small-Batch Irish Brown Soda Bread on page 31 of 32 in the March/April 2025 Cook’s Illustrated magazine — a small kernel of confidence sparked in the back of my mind.

(Especially since it didn’t call for any dried fruit.)

The only catch? I didn’t have any buttermilk on hand. However, as it turns out, this wasn’t a deal breaker as the recipe writer included instructions on making this loaf ahead of time (i.e., assembling all the dry ingredients), which uses buttermilk powder and water, which I did have on hand, I set to work. 

(My unbaked loaf & the magazine where I discovered the recipe.)

It took me longer to measure all the ingredients than it did to produce the round of shaggy loaf of dough(that I promptly shoved into the oven).

Even better? It turned out perfectly on my very first try! 

The upside to the Small-Batch Irish Brown Soda Bread is that the small loaf doesn’t feel like a faff. The ease it takes to produce is equal to its tastiness, and it is a loaf I can make on the fly.

Though I haven’t figured out how to keep the fruit some soda bread recipes require from singing while baking, I can happily put Small-Batch Irish Brown Soda Bread in my arsenal of reliable recipes!

Christie: I can easily see Chief Inspector Japp whipping up this loaf to accompany some leftover chicken soup or beef stew, so there’s a new penny at that evening’s meal! (Plus, a hearty bread helps fill the belly if there isn’t as much leftover in question as your memory thought there was in the fridge!)