History of Irish Soda Bread

The craft of bread making dates back to the Stone Age, when solid, hard cakes were made from stone-crushed barley and wheat, cereal grains that were likely gathered in the wild.  But it wasn't until the advent of agriculture, perhaps 8,000 years ago, that bread began its evolution from a hard, flat biscuit to the light, moist loaf we know today.  According to ancient legend, the first loaf of bread was baked by accident by an Egyptian slave in about 2600 BC.  While mixing flour and water for the traditional thin, flat wafers, he fell asleep.  The dough rose overnight, and when he baked the mixture the next morning, he realized that he had discovered something special.  Bread became so popular in ancient Egypt, they buried it with the dearly departed to sustain them on their journey to the afterlife.  And it appears that the first commercial bakeries arose in ancient Egypt as well, out of a need to feed the thousands of workers toiling to build the pyramids.

Agriculture spread to the Emerald Isle between 4,000 BC and 3,500 BC.  But in this land of plenty, with its woodland, hedgerow, wetland and sea, the Irish remained hunter-gatherers well into the 19th century, when at last the traditional flat biscuit gave way to a variety of breads, most notably Irish Soda Bread.  For a long time, most of the bread in Ireland was soda bread, baked at the hearthside in either a bastible' (pot), for "cake" soda bread, or on a bakestone (griddle), for "farl" soda bread.  Cake soda bread is a round or rectangular loaf, while farl is cut into triangles before baking.  Unchanged for centuries, both types of soda bread share the same simple ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, bicarbonate of soda, and sour milk or buttermilk.  For something special at teatime, raisins, currants, caraway seeds, and even molasses are sometimes added to the mixture.

One reason for the delayed interest in the art of bread making in Ireland may have been the exceptional climate.  The influence of the Gulf Stream prevents the extremes of summer heat and frosty winters necessary for hard wheat to flourish.  Though soft wheat grows well in Ireland, it is the flour from hard wheat, with its high gluten content, which produces bread that rises high in response to yeast as a leavening agent.  So it wasn't until the early 19th century, when bicarbonate of soda was first introduced in Ireland, that bread making, and Irish Soda Bread in particular, became an established feature of the Irish diet.  However, a more colorful answer to this question comes to us from the Government of Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs: "With the banning of yeast sales to prevent the illegal production of whiskey, alternative raising agents to make bread had to be found.  This resulted in the most distinct of Irish products, Soda Bread."  An interesting footnote: Though forms of bicarbonate of soda had been used since ancient times for curing meat, it appears that the American Indians, around 1796, were the first to use it as a leavening agent for bread.

The popularity of Irish Soda Bread spread throughout the world and continues to be a mainstay in Ireland at breakfast, lunch and dinner, to soak up the gravy.   It is also an important component of Ireland's Ulster Fry, the most notorious breakfast in the world, which consists of fried eggs, fried bacon, fried soda bread, fried potato bread, fried black pudding, fried sausages, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms, etc., etc., etc.