Fruit soda bread

If you’ve ever fancied making bread but didn’t know where to start, this is the recipe for you!

It’s very easy to make, cheap in terms of ingredients and tastes like proper, home-made bread should.

And your house will smell amazing when it’s cooking!

4 cups of plain white flour
2 cups of non-dairy milk. I used almond but soya, oat, rice etc will all work fine
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of lemon juice (or the juice of half a lemon)
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
1 handful (about ¾ of a cup, if you want proper measurements!) of raisins or mixed dried fruit like currants, cranberries or chopped dried apricots. Mixed peel is really good in this recipe!

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF. Put the milk and lemon juice in a jug, stir together well, then leave to one side for a moment.
In a large bowl, add the flour, salt, baking soda and sugar. Mix to combine.
Pour the milk/lemon juice mixture in to the flour, stirring as you go. It will make a sticky dough but keep mixing until you can’t see any traces of dry flour. Stir in the raisins and any other dried fruit. Get your (clean) hands in there and knead the bread briefly – it doesn’t require much kneading, certainly no more than a minute.
You can then cook the kneaded dough either in a 2lb loaf tin or, more traditionally, on a lightly-oiled baking tray. I use a loaf tin because I like the neater shape! You can cut a cross in the top of the dough too, which will give a traditional finish when it’s cooked. Tip: use a serrated knife.
Cook for 30-35 minutes until the top is brown and crusty. Leave it to cool before cutting.

This is very simple to make; the quantities above make quite a big loaf and it tastes really good.
The dough is very sticky but fortunately you don’t have to knead it much!
It’s great toasted and will last a couple of days if you keep it covered or wrapped.

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