Irish (You Bodily Autonomy) Bread
In honor of the women of Ireland, who just gained the right to choose, I present to you a modified Irish Bread recipe. I changed the fruit component, but if you want the traditional route, that link will be in the comments.
Find this playlist of the hits of 1973:
https://youtu.be/P-cjJRsKvVQ
(BTW, Bra burning was not as common as popular culture would lead you to believe.)
Before you attempt this, you should know what you will need a place to knead your dough. I used the kitchen counter by the sink, but you want to go ahead and clean it first. Don’t leave any residue from the cleaner on the counter. It will end up in your bread. In the interests of full disclosure, you need all of the following and yes, you are signing up to wash all of this:
-a small knife and a large knife (a young priest and old priest)
-a cutting board or plate
-a cast iron skillet (recipe called for a 9″, but I have a 10″ so I just decreased the cook time from about an hour to checking it starting at 45 minutes.)
If that didn’t scare you off, you will probably want to make sure your kitchen sinks are clean and empty. There will be a lot of cleaning afterwards all well.
(I ended up with more like 2 cups buttermilk in mine, like my sports bra)
1 cup dried apricots (quartered)
*The apricots are much sweeter than the original recipe. The bread was sweeter than anticipated. Perhaps, try 3/4 cup of sugar to taste.
I preheated my oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit when I got the folding in the fruit bit, but you can do it now if you are a badass in the kitchen. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Set aside, like traditional gender roles.
Next, quarter your apricots and then, put the cranberries and apricots in a large bowl with warm water. Let soak in, like the beauty of Notorious RBG’s dissent collar.
This is the tricky part: You have to add the buttermilk to the dry mix *GRADUALLY* or you will curdle the dough, much like a “Don’t take this the wrong way...” preamble ensures taking it the chauvinist way. I put the buttermilk in the dry measuring cup (as I don’t have a wet measuring cup) and just sort of shimmied the milk over the edge while my whisk got increasingly more clumped. Halfway through, I had to split the whisk up and remove the dough from the center. Before I got enough milk into wet the mixture, I gave up on the whisk altogether and just starting pulling the dough to one side with one hand while pouring the milk with the other. Kinda kneading, but not much.
Buttermilk smells *awful* when it’s in date; it has not gone bad. It’s just gross on its own, but amazing in the bread.
You need to wash your hands a lot! The dough is gonna be all over you like fedoras on a “nice guy.”
Drain the fruit and give it another good rinse while in the colander. Pat dry with paper towels. I wrapped mine in a paper towel burrito and slapped it around a little. The damper it is the longer you will have to bake the bread. Fold in the fruit to the dough while in bowl.
(This is when I preheated my oven.)
On a well-floured surface, turn out the dough like Fancy’s mama.
I used about a half a cup of flour on the counter by my sink. You will feel with every ounce of your body that you are doing this wrong, like the side eye you get when you call your significant other “partner” instead of “boy/girlfriend” or “husband/wife.” JUST KEEP KNEADING UNTIL IT IS A BALL! The A-HA! moment will happen and it will be beautiful!
Now that you’ve graduated to this part, make the dough into a round. Then, you will put it into your greased cast iron skillet. I used olive oil non-stick spray, liberally (like everything else I do.) Take a sharp knife and cut an ‘x’ on the top. Bake for about an hour. The soda bread is done when the crust is golden brown and you can put a knife in the center and pull it out clean. Used tin foil to keep the top from burning.
Good Luck! ... and as always, burn the patriarchy, not the bread!
