5-Minute Authentic Irish Brown Bread Recipe | Bigger Bolder Baking (2024)

FAQs

How do you make brown bread less dense? ›

One trick is to add some white all-purpose flour along with the whole wheat flour. Even just a little white flour has enough gluten to give the dough better structure. White and whole wheat flour can be substituted one-to-one, so just play with the ratio of the two until you end up with a loaf you like.

If you really want to get technical, brown bread is a form of soda bread since it uses baking soda as the leavening agent. However, the two loaves differ pretty significantly from there. Irish brown bread has a deep, nutty flavor because of its wheat flour and wheat bran while soda bread uses only white flour.

It's called Irish Soda Bread because it's made with baking soda instead of yeast. Because of this, it's more dense than your everyday white sandwich bread.

The beautiful brown colour comes from using brown sugar instead of white sugar and the addition of molasses. Molasses is such an incredible ingredient and gives that loaf of bread a lovely, deep flavour.

All it takes is a small amount of dough enhancer per loaf to create a much lighter and fluffier result. Using a dough enhancer like Vital Wheat Gluten works to improve the texture and elasticity of the dough and elongate the strands of gluten. Doing so allows more room for the gas in the dough to develop and rise.

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Dough too dry or too wet: the texture of the dough is important for the success of your bread. If the dough is too dry, the bread may turn out crumbly and dense. If the dough is too wet, the bread may not rise properly and may have a gummy texture. You should be able to form a round loaf and make the top cut.

It was for everyday use, and its distinctive soft, crumbly, dense texture results from the "soft" wheat that grows in the cool climate of Ireland, meaning that it doesn't have enough protein to form the gluten structure of yeast-raised breads. Hence the use of baking soda, originally potash, as a leavening agent.

Most Irishmen and women eat Irish brown bread for breakfast or lunch. It's best served simple, with a pad of Kerrygold butter or used as a dunker with soup.

The most traditional doneness test calls for thumping the hot bread in the center to hear if it's hollow-sounding. A more foolproof indication is temperature; the loaf will register 200°F to 205°F when an instant-read thermometer is inserted in the center of the bread.

Can you over knead Irish soda bread? ›

Barely any kneading is necessary, but if you overknead it, it makes for a pretty tough bread. Start by mixing the flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar together. Dice up the cold butter and cut it into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or the tips of your fingers.

Ireland, for one, has embraced it's kind of bread – the soda bread. It is a basic staple among the Irish that they call it Irish Soda Bread. It's common to see the locals pair this famous bread with a bottle of Guinness too.

Brown bread is made with wheat flour. Brown bread retains the germ and bran of wheat flour. This simple brown-coloured bread is made using wheat flour, water, salt, sugar, and yeast.

03/4Brown bread

Brown bread has fibre, vitamins and minerals, making it a healthy choice. It helps keep blood sugar level in check, regulates bowel movements and helps in reducing cholesterol. It also reduces hypertension, risk of stroke, gastrointestinal disorder and obesity. Moreover, it's also low in calories.

The usual reason why bread becomes too dense is due to using flour with low protein content. When your loaf is spongy and heavy, you might have also put too much flour into it or made the dough in a cooler or too warm setting.

Let your dough rise enough before baking it

If the dough doesn't fill out with gas, perhaps because it hasn't had time to rise properly, the inside of the loaf will remain soggy and dense as the dough won't bake properly. You should therefore leave plenty of time for your dough to rise.

Germ and bran also add weight to the dough, which can impede its capacity to rise, leading to loaves almost as dense as French cobblestone.

What are the best techniques for creating dark color and shine on bread crusts? To create dark, burnished crusts on their loaves, professional bakers brush milk, egg, or water onto the surface of the risen dough before baking.