Memory and Truth

The setup for the great soda bread competition.

Since last we met on Tuesday, I have baked five different soda breads—four from my mom’s recipe and one from The Irish Bakery which varies slightly from my mom’s. Two were baked twice because they were disasters straight from the moment they fell out of the cast iron skillet. My mom’s, the control for taste and texture, uses wheat flour. So does The Irish Bakery’s. The others use different kinds of gluten free flours. They are from Bob’s Old Red Mill and King Arthur. Old Red Mill consists of beans or nuts and roots. King Arthur’s is composed of different grains, potato starch, arrow root and a bunch of vitamins. I’m sure there’s more brands and kinds of gluten free flours but these were the ones available around here.

Minus the two I baked twice.

I lost a whole day looking for my mom’s recipe. It wasn’t in the special folder that holds my most cherished old recipes. It wasn’t stuck among the pages of her cookbook. Eventually I found a note card covered in my scrawl and labeled “Soda Bread.” I had a vague memory of it being the one dictated to me by my sister and it seemed about right. A test bake, however, resulted in a spit-out verdict, a bitter tasting cake-like thing that I was pretty sure birds wouldn’t eat.

The offending recipe.

Maybe I was wrong about the note card recipe. I called my sister, Sue, and read what I insisted she told me. She was pretty sure our Mom’s included sugar in the ingredients.

“It was sweet?” I asked.

“Sweet-ish.”

“How much sugar, you think.”

“I don’t remember.”

I thought about it for awhile. My memory is of a thick-crusted bread with a soft denseness inside, perfect for supporting a healthy slatter of butter. I couldn’t recall it being sweet, though.

A consultation with the likes of Mark Bittman and The Irish Bakery revealed that their recipes did not include sugar.

Maybe my sister was wrong. Maybe the sweetness of my mom’s was the result of a good handful of raisins. It was not a pretty business, pondering this question.

See, this contest is about my family’s heritage. It’s about how the food we remember from childhood is one of the strongest connections we have to who we are and where we come from. This recipe brings my mom back to life. It echos the voice of my grandmother who I never heard and the family she left behind when she immigrated to America. They are who I am distilled from and the soda bread recipe is the one tangible link to them that’s left to me.

I had to find my Mom’s recipe.

A desperate search commenced, beginning with combing through past St. Patrick’s posts. I found one from years ago but it included butter and was cooked at a lower temperature than any other I knew. I sent it to Sue who is in the midst of a move and a little frazzled.

“I don’t know. My copy is in a cookbook somewhere in the universe of storage,” she almost cried.

So, back to scrolling through even older posts and, at last, I came across a faded photograph of the original recipe my mom typed long ago.

The judges—the sons and their partners: Al, Brynne, Sam, Sandy—now have all their portions. My husband is an alternate: he’s been nibbling his way through them all and has already given rather pithy comments. It’d be nice to have everyone in one room for the tasting but they have lives that don’t include my cockamamie wishes. I think two are wandering down in the afternoon to the neighborhood’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Results will be posted on Tuesday.

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Bonus recipe!

In my search I discovered another recipe my mom wrote down for what she labeled a tea cake. It’s basically soda bread but enriched with butter and finely chopped nuts. You bake it in a loaf pan rather than a skillet. Lighter, sweeter, the bread is perfect for tea time.

Mom’s Tea Cake

2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup raisins
about a 1/2 cup of finely chopped nuts (I used pecans. Walnuts would work especially well)
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg slightly beaten
1/4 cup softened butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a loaf pan.

Mix together the dry ingredients, making sure the raisins and nuts are well coated with flour (I'm adjusting this from my mom's who would agree the raisins and nuts need to be covered in flour so they don't sink to the bottom of the cake).

Make a small crater in the middle of the flour and quickly stir in the buttermilk, egg, and butter. 

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and give it a good shake to evenly distribute the batter and ensure there's no bubbles in the middle.

Bake for 45 minutes. Test it with a skewer to see if the middle is baked through. If not, return and bake for, at most, 15 minutes more.