I just came across a charming article from the New York Times about one man’s quest to learn how his mother makes Irish soda bread. The author visits his mother in the suburbs for a tutorial. I did the same thing years ago, and in one of my notebooks somewhere I have my mother’s recipe for her Irish soda bread. She makes it just about every day, and the only time she changed the recipe was when Santa Maria entered my life. She doesn’t like raisins, so my mother started making loaves with red currants in them for her. My mother’s soda bread isn’t typical. It doesn’t have caraway seeds, for example, and it isn’t at all cake-like. There’s no butter in her bread. It’s very healthy, although it has the drawback of going stale remarkably quick. Maybe that’s why my mother’s in the habit of making it so often. Someday, I’ll muster the courage to try to make a loaf myself.
