The recipes I’ve made from the Rouxbe website have always been outstanding, but this one caused near obsessive behavior as repeatedly chose to eat more of this bread rather than anything else. Maybe Just another slice, this time toasted with some jam.

The texture of this Irish Brown Soda Bread is what had me on my knees begging for more. A most magical chewiness made it downright addictive. It helped that I was slathering the slices with fresh homemade butter, but even sans slather, I couldn’t seem to stop eating this bread. I credit the steel-cut oats for pushing the texture to a level of pure delight. They not only added chewiness but the oat grains almost popped when bitten into. If you’ve had the pleasure of eating a bowl of steel-cut oat cereal, you know what I mean about the distinctive pop as the individual grains are chewed.

Irish Brown Soda Bread

Don’t be intimidated if you aren’t a bread baker because this is a quick bread. As in, mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, the wet in another, stir them together and pop it in the oven. No more complicated than making cornbread or muffins.

It was buttermilk that led me to making this bread. For my own private little celebration of St. Patrick’s Day I tried my hand at making butter. Of course buttermilk is a byproduct of the process and when I saw this recipe and realized it would not only put my freshly extracted buttermilk to good use, but act as a suitable delivery vehicle for the the gorgeous butter I’d just made, I got right to work.

Steel-cut oats

If you don’t have steel-cut oats on hand, get some. Not only can you make this spectacularly simple bread, but you can make this…

Steel-cut oats cereal with cranberries and pecans

Check out my guest blog post for Girl Power Hour to learn how to make the best bowl of oatmeal. The key is starting with steel-cut oats.

Happily the success I had makeing this bread wasn’t a fluke; I’ve made the bread twice now. I also wanted to be sure it was just as good with commercial buttermilk, and it is. For a different twist on Irish Soda Bread, check out Imen McDonald’s post about her Wild Garlic Flax Seed Soda Bread. It looks gorgeous.

Recipe Links:

• Irish Brown Soda Bread, from Rouxbe.com
• Wild Garlic Flax Seed Soda Bread, from I Married an Irish Farmer

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Gargantuan buttermilk rolls! I made these after seeing Michael Ruhlman’s post featuring utterly delicious looking rolls. I’m not sure why mine rose up as though they were off to conquer the world.

The first rise was wonderfully successful and the sweet yeasty aroma of the dough filled me with anticipation.

Soft dinner rolls have always evaded me. I haven’t attempted Parker House rolls for years, but I recall never being able to get them to rise very well; clearly not an issue with these. Once portioned and given time to rise again, I garnished them with fennel seeds and nigella seeds.

I weighed the ingredients and scaled out each roll to 4 ounces, same as he did.  Even though they are busting out of the pan the interior seems to have a nice crumb. I will give these another try, but bake them in something larger than a 9″ springform pan and portion them to 2 ounces rather than 4. I am interested to see the results he will be posting from other readers who tried the recipe. If you feel like baking up some delightfully tender rolls you will find the recipe on his blog.