Bakers of Askme!

March 26, 2024 9:00 AM

I am making a half recipe of Irish Soda Bread (pretty much like this but also with an added egg.) To answer any questions about why one would make only a half loaf of somethign so lovely as Irish Soda Bread instead of saving the other half for later: I only had half the amount of buttermilk and no cider vinegar in the house. Should I cut the baking time in half?

I don't want to thump this thing every 5 minutes, nor cut into it before it's ready. Nor do I want a dried-out loaf.
Thank you!

posted by ojocaliente to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

Best answer: 75% would probably be about right, assuming the crust has properly browned.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:16 AM on March 26, 2024 [4 favorites]

No egg in Irish bread. If we had an egg we would have made a cake.
posted by Iteki at 9:19 AM on March 26, 2024 [7 favorites]

Response by poster: OK thanks, just to head off further discussion on this route: I do realize this is not the traditional Irish recipe, (though I did get the idea of putting in an egg from my creative Galway friend) it also uses a lot more white flour than the authentic recipe and has sugar and butter and honey so perhaps I should just call it Soda Bread. Nonetheless this delicious variety of some kind of inauthentic soda bread is in my oven now and I'm wondering when I should take it out lol
posted by ojocaliente at 9:31 AM on March 26, 2024 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Are you putting the half-recipe into the same size pan as a full recipe? The general advice I've heard when you don't have the right size pan is that for every inch in diameter increase (presuming round pans), with zero change in ingredient volume, you should: 1), bump the oven temperature up by 25 degrees Fahrenheit, and 2) bump the bake time down by a quarter. This is because the final product will be thinner, and more surface area will be exposed.

Presuming you've got your half loaf recipe in a full loaf pan, and on preview I see you've already got it in the oven, I would go bump the temp up right now, and start checking around the 50-75% time for doneness. The center will be done much sooner in your half-height loaf, which means you'll need to be wary of it drying out, and the outsides may not be sufficiently browned for your taste.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 9:41 AM on March 26, 2024 [6 favorites]

You can add regular vinegar to milk and use it for buttermilk. Not that you asked...
posted by Enid Lareg at 9:56 AM on March 26, 2024 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: (Thank you, this definitely is good info, unfortunately I only had balsamic )
posted by ojocaliente at 9:57 AM on March 26, 2024

Response by poster: OK if anyone reads this for the same question: about 75% was perfect. Thanks everyone!
posted by ojocaliente at 9:58 AM on March 26, 2024 [10 favorites]