lands in County Alameda – home to Berkeley California…
What else could happen but we stuff it full o’ nuts and seeds…This bread is inspired by Karyn D, one of my classmates at the Bauman College Nutrition Consultant program. She happens to hail from Ireland – home to my favorite fiddle music :). For snack she made for us her very addictive Irish Soda bread which she learned how to make from her Mum by the POTPOT method. Just so you know she’s the one who added the nuts and seeds. I’m just attempting to record an approximation of a recipe – not the recipe. This is what I came up with. Not as tasty as I remember hers to be but satisfies my craving. (Yes I know it has dairy in it – which I am sensitive to but what the heck you gotta live a little!) And I couldn’t in good conscious call it Irish soda bread because of the County Alameda influences…
Irish Lassie Crunch Bread
Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
——– ———— ——————————–
3/4 cup oatmeal — old fashion
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup almond meal
2 tablespoons sucanat or rapadura
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon sea salt, fine
3 tablespoons unsalted butter — chilled, and cut into cubes
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup flax seed
1/3 cup walnuts — finely chopped
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
2 Tablespoons sunflower seeds — for topping
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a medium loaf pan with butter and lightly flour.
Toss together flours, almond meal, sucanat, baking powder, baking soda and sea salt in a large bowl to blend. Add butter. Using fingertips, rub in until coarse meal forms. Mix in nutsand seeds. Make well in center of flour mixture. Add buttermilk. Using fork, gradually stir dry ingredients into milk until just blend. Don’t overwork or you will have a very tough loaf of bread.
Transfer dough to prepared pan and flatten slightly. Sprinkle dough with the 2 tablespoons of sunflower seeds.
Bake bread until brown and tester inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean, about 30-40 minutes. Cool bread in pan 10 minutes. Transfer to rack to finish cooling. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Yields 1 loaf with approximately 14 slices. Per Serving: 147 Calories; 8g Fat (49.4% calories from fat); 6g Protein; 14g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber.
A nice variation would be to add some dried fruit: raisins, apricots, cranberries, cherries…
Enjoy!
