I’ve never made soda bread before…can’t even be certain I’ve eaten it before, but saw it being made on TV last night and it looked easy and fairly flexible about ingredients.

Not completely flexible, you understand, there were basics involved – 500g flour, a big teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and a teaspoon of salt.

From there, one of the bakers last night used guinness as his ‘liquid’ and the other used buttermilk.

Now, I had neither, but I did have some creme fraiche in the fridge…which is made of yogurt and butter milk and that seemed pretty close, so I reckoned I’d give it a shot.

At 8.50 I asked Di if she wanted bagels or soda bread for breakfast… on the basis that I wanted to be sat in front of the TV by 9am to watch the Grand Prix. She opted for Soda bread, mainly out of curiosity I think, since there was none in the house and I was just stood there making a cup of coffee and obviously not doing baking.

So, with 10 minutes available, and humming the Benny Hill theme tune I set to work. Di gave me a minute by minute countdown. I put the oven on.

I had a bag of flour – weighed it – 600g. I tipped it into a large bowl from a height (I figured that by doing this I avoided the need to sieve it) and made sure I was a bit more generous with the Bicarb and the salt and I grabbed the Creme Fraiche (1 Minute) – there didn’t seem enough, so I threw some milk in too, I don’t know how much, but I was aiming for a total of about 600ml.  I think next time I will aim for less liquid than flour, it was slightly too sticky.

I mixed the lot, (2 minutes) firstly with a knife and then with one hand until it bound together (3 minutes)…no kneading like normal dough, Soda bread is better if it receives literally the least mixing you can do.

I put it on a baking tray (4 minutes) and popped it in the oven, grabbed my coffee and settled down in front of the TV to watch the parade lap and start of the grand prix.

…45 minutes later this came out of the oven, fantastically rustic looking and soft on the inside…

We ate it with some home made marmalade and home made raspberry jam….delicious…