Irish Soda Bread

Well, friends, I know that this post is breaking with tradition, but I simply had to share something rather exciting. This evening, I made Irish Soda Bread, which was rather a new experiment for me. I have made various kinds of bread before, but this was a new recipe and I was eager to see how it would turn out.

I took a picture of it. I really and truly did, knowing how much you, my loyal readers *coughcough* would enjoy such a sight. However, my camera card and my computer are still giving each other the silent treatment, and refuse to communicate even long enough for me to frenetically drag a picture from the camera card onto my desktop. Alas, we are thus left picture-less.

Edit: here is a picture!!! :)

Nonetheless, I will endeavor to describe the bread to you. It was a soft dough, raisined with raisins, (I was going to say 'peppered with raisins', but that somehow doesn't work ...), and sitting in a bowl. Then, it was a gooey lump encased in a shell of flour, being twisted and mangled into something stretchy and pliable. Later on, it was growing, looking like a bucket does when snow keeps on falling, making it into a soft, white mountain muffin hat. Eventually I gave it a good punching, then cut an 'x' across the top with a very sharp knife, being careful not to slice myself as well. Then I let it rise some more.

During this stage in the process, the bread proceeded to expand until it filled up an astonishing amount of the large baking sheet I had placed it on. I had expected a normal-sized loaf of bread; this was quickly becoming a very no-nonsense looking bread mountain. I wondered if I had accidentally genetically modified it somehow, or maybe given it steroids. (My friends, when I came out of the kitchen and told them this, laughed it off, by the way.) After it had scared me long enough, I put it in the oven to kill the rebel yeast-soldiers who were evidently bent on taking over the kitchen, if not the world, and left.

Ostensibly, I now had free time. That is a rare occurrence in my world, but seeing the opportunity, I took it. A  good book on the history of England's Sea Empire in the Tudor world took care of the next 40 or so minutes somewhere in there ...

Warm bread. There is nothing else quite like it in the world. I was shocked by how well it turned out :) After letting it cool for a few minutes, I cut it and put it in a ziploc bag ... then walked back down to the Campus Center to pass around delicious, soft, warm raisin bread to my friends as we played games on our Sunday night fun night. Win!!! :-)

p.s. word of the day is window. that's all.