Home made brown soda bread. Yum, but the crust is too hard!

melanzana

Hi all,

Am a great fan of soda bread, so easy peasy and yummy with real butter when still warm.

But, I find the crusts can be like the Rock of Gibraltar! Tooth crunching hard, so I just cut it off.

I've tried covering the loaf with a damp tea towel when out ofnthe oven but it doesn't really work. I have a mouthful of expensive crowns and I don't want to break them!

So has anyone manage to home bake wholemeal soda bread with a softish crust? Just like the bought ones I mean, some professional baker out there might have an answer?

Thank you

BitterAndTwisted

Try and cut the baking-time down a bit. That, or the oven's too hot.

ladylouise62

BitterandTwisted's comment is good, but I also, was trained by my (Irish) mum to wrap it in a clean tea towel as soon as out of the oven.
Also, I believe that one thing that affects the crust is fat - the more fat in the bread, the softer the crust.

melanzana

Thanks folks.

Right, I will reduce the oven temp and reduce cooking time by a few minutes.

I was just looking at a shop bought wheaten loaf that I like and there is no fat in, just the same ingredients I use myself at home. Maybe I'll just buy that one in future. Nice soft crust! But no, I will persevere and try to get it right!

Thanks for the suggestions. Appreciated.

timmytummy

I do a fair ammount of bread baking and trying different recipes, used to make soda bread when staying on my sisters farm, we always used buttermilk and wholemeal flour and the bread was good, always made great toast the next day. You could try some plain yoghurt and milk as the liquid, I have a recipe to make buttermilk at home not as a byproduct of butter making, I can look it out for you, would some steam added when baking help, put an old tin in the bottom of oven when heating up, tip in a cup of water when putting loaf in, shut door quick to retain moisture!

FrugalWorker

I've struggled with this too - not just crust, but sometimes my whole loaf is just too hard. But I think I've just found a solution - Egg!!

http://www.bordbia.ie/aboutfood/recipes/desserts/pages/traditionalbrownsodabread.aspx

I followed something similar to this. The version I followed, but didn't save link (Doh!) had I think 350Gm of whole meal flour, 100gm white flour, an egg, 2 tsp olive oil, salt (a good dash), buttermilk (I think it was as recipe above, but I ended up with a wetter than normal dough, so I added a bit more flour), 1tsp soda, 1 egg. The recipe I was following called for 50gm oats - I didn't have any, but did have crushed linseed + nuts that was looking for a new purpose and used about 50 gm of this. The bread was far nicer than anything I've had before.

Someone told me years ago that adding an egg changes the crumb and the crust - I'm converted. I'm not convinced this is my final solution, but give a bread with an egg a go.