GRANDMA POTTER’S IRISH SODA BREAD


4 cups of Flour
4 teaspoons of FRESH baking powder
1⁄2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon of caraway seeds (optional)
1 cup of raisins (Grandma used to use white and regular)
1⁄2 cup of currants (can substitute total raisins/currants = 1 1⁄2 cups)
2 eggs
1⁄2 cup butter
1 cup milk

Sift together, flour, baking powder, sugar and salt into a large bowl. Pre-soak raisins and currants in HOT water and drain well, sprinkle lightly with flour mix and hold out. Cut in butter (not too soft) with pastry cutter; add raisins, beaten eggs and milk.

Turn out on to a floured board into a round loaf and put back into bowl. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and place in a warm place to let rise. Place in a greased round baking pan and bake about one hour in modern oven at 350 degrees. Grandma always scored large X into the top of the loaf before baking about 1⁄2” deep.

Grandma Jane Potter brought this recipe over from Ireland when she was still an O’Gorman. It is an old family recipe that her mother and grandmother made in the old country... Grandma Potter added the caraway seeds as her little touch and always said how her mother would roll over in the grave if she knew. Grandma’s sister Aunt Liz used to complain all the time about the caraway seeds and how they got stuck in her false teeth and that their mother would never do it that way. Her recipe (also supposedly my Great Grandmother O’Gorman’s recipe) was completely different and not nearly as good.

Please be judicious in passing this recipe around... Grandma Potter should always be credited so her memory will live on. I watched her make this bread and enjoyed eating it many, many times whenever she visited us when I was a child or we went to her house. My sister Jo Ann Philbrick Lee took the trouble to measure out all the ingredients on several occasions when Grandma visited and made her bread. Grandma never measured anything, she just threw it all into the bowl and it always came out right. The crust should be a little thick and hard and you can test the loaf for doneness with a piece of spaghetti in the center of the loaf where it has been scored to insure that it is done.

It is so good that it can be eaten without anything, but Grandma frequently covered each slice heavily with butter and sometimes jam. Grandma would cut the loaf a quarter at a time so that the bread would stay fresh and then she cut the quarter into slices about 1⁄2 to 3⁄4’s of an inch thick. She never cut it into pie shaped pieces because the bread is crumbly and the thin part would fall apart.

Enjoy it and remember Grandma Potter... I always will.