Cooking Mei's Way: Jim's Onion Cheddar Irish Soda Bread

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 
I'm Mei Wei and I love cooking! This year for St. Patrick's Day my mom chose a new kind of Irish soda bread called Jim's Cheddar Onion Soda Bread  from Allrecipes.com to have for our dinner. And I want to show you how to make it!

Ingredients. There is NO baking soda in this recipe!

Ingredients

• 4 cups bread flour, plus more for dusting
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
• 3/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 3/4 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (we used Kerrygold Irish Cheddar)

Directions 

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Use a Pampered Chef baking stone or if you don't have one, you can use a cookie sheet with parchment paper or lightly greased.

You will need a sifter and a  large bowl. Next you combine the flour, salt and baking powder. 
 

Measure the flour. Level with a knife.

Be careful when you grate the cheese.

Use a pastry blender to add the butter. Then mix in the buttermilk. The dough should feel dry but not really, really dry or sticky. Kids, if you're helping your Mommy or Daddy make this, hand it over to them now because it's very stiff and extremely hard to mix. 

Add a little more buttermilk to make it soft but not sticky.

  Dump the dough on the counter without making a mess! Now make a well in the center of the dough and mix in the onions and the cheese. Mix it very GENTLY  "as if you're handling eggs" (as my grandmother says) because if you don't the bread will be dense and hard to eat.

Dump the dough and work it on the counter.

Divide the dough in half (kids can do this too). Next make them into ball shapes and gently pat them down until they are approximately 2 inches thick. Now you can place them on the pan and dust them with flour.

Handle like they have eggs in them: very gently.

 Bake about 30 minutes until they are golden brown. Let them cool on a rack for a few minutes. 

 

This is what they look like when they come out.

Cut it with a bread knife. It smells great!

The onion and cheese kept it moist on the inside but the outside was crusty. Eat it when it's warm. We had it with soup and then we had it toasted for breakfast! Yummy!!!

Don't wait until next St. Patrick's Day. Make some now!