The Hungry Poet: A Soda Bread for Boethius

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‘Happiness cannot consist in things governed by chance’ wrote Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy in 523 while imprisoned and awaiting execution. Admittedly not facing the same trials as Boethius (the poor soul), with the gauntlet of driving to Tesco to pick up the Click-and-Collect not quite registering on the same scale of misfortune, I couldn’t help but think of his maxim recently in relation to bread, or at least, yeasted breads. I suppose when it comes to using yeast there’s always an element of chance: how will it come out? Have I over proved? Under-proven? Was there enough water in the mix? Did I leave it for long enough? There are just so many variables in bread. Now, this happens to be one of the things I usually love about bread, but recently, you know, I’ve just felt like having a break from it. And I wanted a bread I could rely on with a bit more consistency and that I could make more quickly, ideally in the morning, and ready for lunch not dinner. In short, taking my cue from Boethius, I wanted there to be less margin for chance. 

So, I’ve started making soda bread again. Recently I just haven’t quite had the patience for my bread to prove, so I’ve returned to soda bread. It’s such a wonderful loaf. I say soda bread, but in Northern Ireland it’s largely known as – or at least we always grew up calling it – wheaten bread, or wheaten, for short. Admittedly, proper wheaten bread is made exclusively with wholemeal plain flour and not strong flour as that would be too glutinous and this bread doesn’t require kneading – in fact it’s quite the opposite. Sodo bread can be made with just white plain flour, but for me the flavour (and indeed the nutritional value!) comes with the wholemeal element. This can also be boosted with the inclusion of porridge oats or seeds, which both lend a fantastic texture, especially when toasted. I tend to go 50% white plain flour and 50% wholemeal plain flour, for a balance of lightness and flavour. I have nothing against pure wheaten bread, but prefer this balance mostly. And while this element of flour is important in the composition of a soda bread, and while the bicarbonate of soda is also crucial, and a little bit of butter (about 25g rubbed into the mix) also gives it a flavour boost (and helps preserve in the bread bin by another day or two at least) there’s another ingredient which is not just essential but a thing of wonder, and up there with my all-time favourite ingredients: buttermilk. 

It used to be hard to get buttermilk in the supermarket and indeed even now you have to really look for it in the dairy aisle, particularly as it’s only sold in little pint sized plastic cartons. I could hardly believe my eyes when I picked up the ‘click and collect’ a few weeks ago – when I ordered it for the first time – and saw that the buttermilk was from Dale Farm, Northern Ireland. The by-product that’s left after churning cream into butter, it’s got the most amazing tang. They say you add lemon juice to milk if you haven’t got it, but that’s a very poor substitute. And, to be honest, once you’ve used buttermilk you’ll realise there is no substitute. It brings such a richness and unique flavour to the bread.  

There's a myth that scoring an X across the top, and therefore dividing it into four sections, has something to do with letting the devil while baking. While I don't quite buy all that, it does make it look good.

Indeed, the history of soda bread is an interesting one which I won’t go into in depth here, but suffice to say it came into being from the mid-nineteenth century onwards basically arising from necessity: it was cheap to make; the soft Irish wheat didn’t contain enough gluten so plain flour worked; people had buttermilk left over from churning milk to butter; bicarbonate of soda reacted with the buttermilk to help the bread rise. And so we have a bread which became the staple of most of the island or Ireland. It’s a bread, I suppose, of necessity, a highly practical bread, high in nutrients. 

And more importantly, you can rely on it: you can rely on it to be quick and tasty. And, yes, I suppose there is something consolatory about it. It's an inventive bread born out of necessity. And I'm sure its appearance on the table of a mid-nineteenth century Irish family would indeed have been a soothing sight, to say the least. So, yes, it is a bread of consolation. It's a bread fit for Boethius. 

If you enjoyed this, I've written elsewhere about consolation in art, when exploring Liszt's Consolation No. 3.