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Irish Wheaten Bread

Irish Wheaten Bread

Irish Wheaten Bread

This simple Irish Wheaten Bread recipe shows you how to make your own Irish Soda bread in your own home. It is easy to make and you do not need any special tools or ingredients. It is delicious when you serve it up with some salted butter or with other condiments of your choice.

You will notice when you make it that the dough is very thick and dense, thanks to the buttermilk in the Wheaten bread mix.

irish wheaten dough
The dough before the oven

What is Irish Wheaten Bread?

There are several Irish bread types. This is one of them.

In the North of Ireland, brown soda bread is commonly known as Wheaten bread.

Soda’ bread is bread made with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda or bicarbonate of soda) as the leavening agent. In Ireland, we make soda bread with white or whole wheat flour, depending on where you are.

irish soda bread

This recipe for Wheaten bread uses a mixture of wholemeal (whole-wheat) flour and all-purpose flour with some zapped rolled oats.

The buttermilk in the recipe gives the bread its soft moist texture. We use baking soda as the leavening agent to create a brown wheaten soda loaf that is just delicious.

irish soda bread crumb
brown soda bread crumb
Irish Wheaten Bread

My mum always has wheaten bread or soda bread in the house stashed away in the freezer as it is readily available in the local supermarkets.

Toasted soda bread is always a staple part of our breakfast at my parent’s house.

irish toasted soda bread
Toasted soda bread with salted Irish butter

When we lived in the Netherlands it was impossible to obtain soda bread locally, so I used this simple recipe to make it myself.

The result is a bread that is perfect to eat warm as an accompaniment to a bowl of soup, or together with some nice mature cheddar cheese and butter.

irish buttered wheaten bread

What to serve with your soda bread 

If you ever visit Ireland and travel the Wild Atlantic Way, you will find that homemade brown soda bread is ubiquitous. Irish bread is often served up with a full Irish breakfast (an Irish fry) or as an accompaniment to a fish chowder in the pubs and B&B’s. It may also be served together with smoked salmon, which still gets caught and smoked locally.

It is also everywhere in the supermarkets so we tend to buy it now rather than make it ourselves. Most of the local supermarkets in Ireland have their own soda bread available, often locally made.

My local Tesco’s has ‘Sheila’s’ bread, which we love. This bread is stored frozen and defrosted before putting on the shelves, to prevent wastage, and you can do the same with these loaves.

Irish soda bread is often very crumbly and can make a bit of a mess when you slice it. But this recipe gives a soft bread that tends to stay together when you slice it, as you can see from these photographs. 

tomato soup and irish bread

So if you happen to be Irish and missing the Emerald Isle, all you need to do is bake this recipe and serve it up warm or toasted with some salted butter. Maybe with some seafood chowder to go with it? A great Irish treat for your family on St. Patrick’s day!

seafood chowder with wheaten bread
Wheaten bread with Seafood Chowder

It will remind you of home. 

irish farl

I hope you have fun making this delicious bread. If you do try this recipe, please let me know how you get on in the comments section below!

How to make Wheaten bread

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irish soda bread

Irish Wheaten Bread

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 50 minutes
Total Time: 55 minutes

This easy recipe will help you make a delicious authentic Irish wheaten bread. Perfect as an accompaniment to a bowl of soup, or toasted with butter and cheddar cheese.

Ingredients

  • 260g wholemeal flour
  • 150g plain flour (all-purpose flour)
  • 50g oats (blitzed in Nutribullet)
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 egg
  • 250ml buttermilk
  • 1 tsp caster sugar
  • 1 tsp salt

Instructions

  1. Pre-heat oven to 190C.
  2. Then blitz your oats in your food processor or Nutribullet.
  3. Add all the dry ingredients (flour, oats, baking soda, caster sugar, salt) together and mix well.
  4. Then add the egg and buttermilk and mix until you have a kind of thick dough. I do this in my mixer.
  5. Take the dough onto a floured surface and form a ball.
  6. Then flatten the ball until you have a short cylinder about 5 cm high.
  7. Mark a cross in the top with a knife and place on a baking tray on some parchment paper or silicone baking sheet.
  8. Place in the oven for 50 minutes until a dark brown colour.
  9. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Notes

Serve with salted butter warm or toasted with some mature cheddar cheese.

Delicious with a bowl of soup or some chowder.

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Nutrition Information:
Yield: 12 Serving Size: 1
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 151Total Fat: 2gSaturated Fat: 0gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 1gCholesterol: 16mgSodium: 346mgCarbohydrates: 29gFiber: 3gSugar: 2gProtein: 6g

This nutrition information was automatically calculated by Nutritionix, but may not be 100% accurate.

Did you make this recipe?

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K

Sunday 16th of April 2023

Made this and enjoyed it a lot. Did not grind the rolled oats, and I just eyeballed the brown sugar. Made individual portions in a muffin tin, adding raisins to the last few. Both versions were very good, whether alone or spread with goat cheese or Euro-style butter. Thanks

Gav

Sunday 16th of April 2023

Glad you enjoyed it!

Liz

Friday 6th of January 2023

Hi! Canadian here. I don't understand a few things.

1. Why are we "blitzing" the oatmeal? I don't have a Nutribullet or a food processor so I'm looking for another way to achieve blitzed oatmeal. 2. Ditto castor sugar. Can I just use white or brown sugar? 3. This is blasphemy probably but can I use full fat yoghurt instead of buttermilk?

I'm planning to make this with your fish chowder. I hope to make it to Ireland some day to try all the chowders!

Gav

Sunday 8th of January 2023

I blitz the oatmeal so I do not get large oat pieces in the bread. Nutribullets are great for this as well as for making super smoothies. You should get one, they are not expensive. We have two. Feel free to experiment as much as you want, but I suspect yogurt will give you a different result. The recipe is a guideline. Alter it at your own risk ☺️

Julie

Tuesday 3rd of January 2023

Its beautiful recipe for wheaten bread but the mixture was a bit dry when mixing together could i add more buttermilk

Gav

Sunday 8th of January 2023

The mixture is meant to be dry, but I bet it worked out OK. Feel free to experiment.

gorge

Sunday 1st of May 2022

havent tried it yet but it looks really tasty

Owen

Friday 19th of March 2021

A perfect recipe. tastes brilliant and so easy to make...

Gav

Monday 22nd of March 2021

Glad you liked it Owen

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