Soda Bread

There are evenings when you need bread and you need it now. A pot of soup on the hob, friends arriving in an hour, nothing on the board to tear and butter. This is the loaf for those evenings. Flour, salt, bicarb, buttermilk. No yeast, no proving, no waiting around. The kettle hasn't even boiled twice and there's a warm round loaf cooling on the rack.

Soda bread is the most forgiving bread you'll ever make. You don't knead it. You barely handle it. The whole thing comes together in about four minutes of mixing and goes straight into a hot oven. The bicarb reacts with the buttermilk the moment they meet, and that reaction is what lifts the loaf, so the rule is simple: work fast, mix lightly, get it into the heat. A heavy hand is the only way to spoil it.

The cross on top is the bit everyone remembers. Cut it deep, almost down to the tray, and it opens out in the oven into four proud quarters with a craggy, freckled crust. The crumb inside is dense and tender, faintly sweet from the buttermilk, slightly nutty if you've used wholemeal. It wants butter and not much else, though a wedge of strong cheddar and a spoonful of chutney wouldn't be turned away.

I wrote it down in the notebook the first time I made one properly: "Soda bread. Tuesday. Soup night. Right food, right evening." I've made it a hundred times since and the note still holds. We're only making dinner.