Rye Soda Bread or Why it’s clear I’m not a Kenny Rogers fan

 

So baking didn’t go well last night. I was meant to make Millionaire Shortbread, as I had found a can of condensed milk ion my cupboard, but then forgot to buy the extra ingredients I needed. This happened because I was so hungry after work that all I could think about was what to have for dinner. Therefore any thoughts involving baking just disappeared. First mistake. The second one was not just popping back out and buying the ingredients. No, I had to work out what I else I could make with no planning.

Now I’ve been trying to get a sourdough starter going (a whole other story) so I have quite a bit of organic rye flour in the house. The packet has a recipe on the back for making Rye Soda Bread that needs no yeast so I thought it was worth a shot. Quick, easy and the oven was already on. Happily I go about making it, adding a few fennel and caraway seeds to make it aromatic, and this is there the third mistake came in. I knew the dough was too dry. I’m there mixing and thinking it needs more milk but do I do anything about it? Of course not. I’m sure it will be fine and this is where instinct in baking needs to come in. 

Yes baking is chemistry and you can’t mess around as much as cooking but if you think something isn’t right, and needs a little something extra, it’s best to do it if you’re a semi-experienced baker. I remember bringing home some dough we had made at school for the harvest festival. We were due to get it to rise at home and then our parents would bake it so we could bring it in the next day. Now mine wasn’t rising for some reason. Looking back I think I unfairly blamed my mum (she can have this as an official apology) but she knew, as a baker, that it just wasn’t going to rise and something needed to be done. Instinct! So she stayed up late and made me a whole new mixture, waited for it to rise and baked it so I would have it for the next day. If only she were around last night as my bread came out a solid mass of hard dough. Oh well. I had to settle for my friends having fun at my expense so at least someone had fun.