COCONUT SODA BREAD
- 400g strong white flour bread
- 50g coconut flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp fine sea salt
- 400ml coconut yogurt
- 2 tbsp coconut water
Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 7. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
Sift the flours, bicarbonate of soda and sea salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour the yogurt into the middle.
Gently work the yogurt into the dry ingredients until you start to form a dough. If it feels dry and like it won’t come together as one dough ball, add the coconut water. You might only need one tablespoon of water, you may need three so take it slow.
Once you have a formed dough ball, shape it into a round. You don’t really need to knead this bread as you’re not trying to get yeast to work, so simply mould and shape.
Put the dough ball onto the baking tray and dust with flour. Cut a line across the top with a sharp knife. Perhaps don’t go as deep as I did, as you can see it’s almost split into two halves as it’s baked!
Bake between 25-35 minutes. You’re looking for a nice, brown crust. Once you are happy with the colour, take it out and put it on a cooling rack. After 30 minutes of cooling you can treat yourself to the coveted first, warm slice.
I love bread. To eat and to bake. My repertoire is pretty small so I am trying to learn new breads to bake at home.
What is so wonderful about soda bread is that you can make it in an hour. Which means if you want a loaf to go with dinner or something to slice up for the children when they get in from school, then you can decide to do this pretty late in the day.
I have made soda bread before, but as the traditional recipe uses buttermilk, I wanted to make one that was dairy free.
Mercifully I also love coconut, which is super helpful when you can’t eat dairy. You could use soy yogurt as an alternative to buttermilk if you’re prefer the taste. As I was using coconut yogurt, I thought I would encourage the flavour to come through a bit more and substituted 50g of normal flour for coconut flour. You can use 450g of plain flour or plain bread flour if you don’t want to use coconut flour.
Apart from my heavy handed cut that has caused the loaf to almost split in two, I am very happy with this loaf. It’s yummy. Perfect with some jam or chocolate spread, or toasted with Bertoli spread on top. A comforting start to the day or a mid-afternoon snack.
the things on my plate 