My Favorite Soda Bread

This is incredibly easy and makes you feel a little like a professional. It's a dense bread that goes well with a lot of things. I found this one while searching online for a decent recipe and ran across this one, it had really good reviews so I thought I would share. Types of meals to go with soda bread are soups, cold cut sandwiches, steak...or just a delicious snack.

Soda Bread from Kim's Kitchen

I did make a couple changes so here is my version:

Cheddar Onion Soda Bread
4 c Bread Flour
1 1/2 tsp Salt
1 Tbs Baking Powder
1 Tbs Butter, Softened
1 1/4 c Buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, use regular milk with 1 Tbs of vinegar)
2 Tbs Powdered Sugar
1 bunch of Green Onions, chopped
3/4 c Shredded Cheddar

Preheat oven to 425°F 

In large bowl whisk bread flour, salt, and baking powder until thoroughly combined. Beat in butter, buttermilk and powdered sugar to make a dough.

Gently knead in onion and cheddar. Divide dough in half and shape into balls. 

Place on baking sheet, gently flatten to about 2 inches thick and dust with flour. Cut an X on top.

Bake 30 Minutes

You can use regular flour but it won't turn out as well. Bread flour has a rising agent in it. Since Soda Bread does not have any yeast in it, it depends on the Bread Flour and Baking Soda to make a nice loaf.

The difference between Bread Flour and All-Purpose Flour:
A bit of protein. All-purpose flour has 8-11% protein; bread flour has 12-14%. The extra protein in bread flour results in a slightly higher rise, but you'll still get a good rise with all-purpose.

Valentines Dinner Option 2

Here is another idea for a Valentines day dinner. The meatball recipe is one that people ask for all the time, so instead of writing it many times I will post it here for all to see. This recipe is originally from "The Best of Mennonite Fellowship Meals". If you ever run across this cook book you must buy it. Everything in this cookbook is made for people that love to cook, just starting to cook, have cooked for a long time...you get the point. The recipes are not full of fancy ingredients that you have to order online or drive to Portland to find that one specialty shop that your GPS refuses to acknowledge the existence of... It's one of my favorite cookbooks. Hmm...what was the reason for the blog?...Oh yeah!

Appetizer:

Garlic and Cheese Crusted Bread
Crusty Italian Bread cut in half
Roasted Garlic or Pesto
Butter
Real Parmesan Cheese
Garlic Salt or freshly ground sea salt

Any Italian style bread will work as long as it has a nice hard crust on the outside and soft bread on the inside. I have never really mastered the art of roasting garlic myself, so i cheat and take about 4-5 cloves of garlic, heat a small pan to med low heat with a little olive oil and slow cook until they are soft. Its really easy to over cook or burn garlic so if you follow this method, stay right by the pan and constantly stir them. Adjust the temp to your stove if it gets to warm. It does not take but 1-2 minutes for the garlic to cook. I am pretty sure they sell garlic paste in the grocery store as well. I will also use pesto instead of roasted garlic. If you would like the traditional way of roasting garlic I have the instructions down below.

Roasted Garlic:
( Preheat the oven to 400°F.  Peel away the outer layers of the garlic bulb skin, leaving the skins of the individual cloves intact. Using a knife, cut off 1/4 to a 1/2 inch of the top of cloves, exposing the individual cloves of garlic.  Place the garlic heads in a baking pan; muffin pans work well for this purpose. Drizzle a couple teaspoons of olive oil over each head, using your fingers to make sure the garlic head is well coated. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 400°F for 30-35 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft when pressed.)

Mince/mash the garlic when its done cooking. Mix the garlic with the butter then spread garlic butter on bread halves. Sprinkle salt to taste on your bread, then cover with parmesan cheese. Put your oven on broil and toast your bread. Once it starts to brown it goes pretty quick so keep a close eye on the bread. 

Slice the bread and serve.

You can also serve this with your main dish instead of an appetizer.

I never make this the same way. Sometimes I use Italian seasoning, fresh ground pepper, leave the cheese off... there are many ways to make a good crispy bread. But one thing I always do is have a small bowl with full flavor olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and fresh ground pepper.

Main Dish:

Meatballs
13 oz can of evaporated milk
3 lbs lean ground beef (also works well with ground turkey meat)
2 c quick oatmeal
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp pepper
2 eggs
1 cup chopped onions
2 tsp salt
2 tsp chili powder

Preheat oven to 350°F

Combine all ingredients and shape into balls. You can at this point pour your favorite spaghetti sauce over the top. I have also used Alfredo sauce and that is amazing as well. Another option is to leave them plain and then put the sauce on once it's done.

Meatballs, spaghetti noodles, and your favorite Italian sauce!

Here is a tip if you use turkey meat. Because turkey meat has more moisture than regular hamburger meat you will need to use more oatmeal, or breadcrumbs. They will still be pretty moist, but once they bake i promise they firm up really nice.

I once used this for a party snack and used 3 different sauces: Marinara, Alfredo, and BBQ sauce. All in different baking pans of course. Set a shot glass with toothpicks next to them and you are ready for an amazing party. Who doesn't want a delicious meatball in there mouth? Especially around valentines day.


Dessert:

Cherry Delight
Crust:
2 c flour
1/2 c brown sugar
1 c butter or margarine
1 c chopped nuts (optional)

Mix like pie crust only do not use any water. Press into a 9x13 inch pan and bake 15 minutes at 400°F. After it's cooled, you can use a fork to crumble the crust into pieces and leave in the pan or you can leave it as is. (when i am being lazy i will buy a gram cracker crust 2 pack from the store and use that)

Filling: Two packages Cool Whip or 1 pint cream, whipped

Mix:
1 8oz pkg cream cheese
1 c powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Fold into cool whip. Spread over crumb crust. Pour 2 cans cherry pie filling over the cool whip-cream cheese mixture. Refrigerate at least 12 hours before serving. Will keep for several days.

Note: Other kinds of fruit can be used

This recipe is from my Amish cookbook that I kept from my Amish days. There are a lot of delicious things in there, but this one is super easy and very tasty.

Hope your Valentines Day of full of wonderful surprises!