Buttermilk Soda Bread

Make it step by step

1. Heat the oven to 220C/425F.
2. Slide a heavy baking tray in to heat with it, so the loaf meets a hot surface from the first minute.
3. Whisk both flours, the sieved bicarbonate of soda and the fine salt together in a large bowl.
4. Wait until the oven is fully up to temperature before you go any further. The bicarbonate starts reacting the moment it meets the buttermilk, and a dough left standing on the worktop has spent most of its lift before it ever reaches the heat.
5. Pour in the cold buttermilk all at once.
6. Stir it through with a cupped hand, turning the bowl as you go, until no dry flour is left and the dough is shaggy and wet.
7. Tip the dough onto a floured worktop.
8. Pat it into a round about 18cm across and 5cm deep, using four or five movements and no more. Do not knead it like a yeast dough — soda bread has no long rise to soften the gluten you develop, so a worked dough bakes out tough and close-grained.
9. Lift the round onto the hot tray.
10. Cut a cross deep into the loaf, most of the way down to the tray, so the dense centre can open out and cook through.
11. Bake for 15 minutes.
12. Turn the oven down to 200C/400F.
13. Bake for a further 25-30 minutes, until the crust is dark brown and the base sounds hollow when you knock it, the same test as the tin loaf.
14. Cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes.
15. Eat it the day it is baked. Where the focaccia trades a day of your patience for its texture, this loaf gives everything it has in the first hour and is only good for toast by tomorrow.