So here’s the problem. I’m out of bread, I’m in lockdown and not heading for the shops, and it’s an hour to lunchtime. The solution? The Irish have this right: make soda bread. You can do the whole thing in 40 minutes (of which half is waiting while it’s in the oven), it’s delicious and it requires no particularly high level of skill. In short, I am confident that this will be the easiest of this whole “80 bakes”,  a winner that I keep coming back to.

You can choose any combination of flours you like: 100% white and 100% wholemeal are both fine, but my favourite is 50/50 white wheat and wholemeal spelt. The recipe specifies buttermilk, which definitely helps because of its slight acidity, but you can use milk as an alternative. I suspect that milk with a tablespoon of yoghurt would work well, although I haven’t actually tried.

If we’re all honest, this is closer to an oversized scone than a bread, which is perfectly fine, because scones are lovely. And like scones, once you’ve mastered this plain recipe, you can move on to all sorts of flavourings, sweet and savoury: raisins, honey, nuts, dates are great for sweet versions; bacon, cheese (and also nuts) for savoury.

This recipe is only slightly adapted from the one in Emmanuel Hadjiandreou’s excellent How to make bread.

• Sunflower or other oil for greasing
• 125g white flour (plain or strong, it doesn’t really matter)
• 125g wholemeal flour, plus a bit for the board (I use spelt, but wheat is fine)
• 6g salt
• 4g baking soda
• 260g buttermilk (or 260g milk, or 240g milk plus 20g yoghurt)

1. Preheat oven to 200℃
2. Brush a small pie dish with a little oil
3. Stir together all the dry ingredients in a bowl until evenly mixed
4. Pour in the buttermilk and mix until you have an even dough with no separately visible flour. Don’t overdo the mixing.
5. Transfer the ball of dough to a board lightly dusted with flour; with your hands also lightly floured, form it into a firm, even ball.
6. Transfer the ball of dough to your pie dish and make two gashes across the top to form a cross.
7. Bake for 20-30 minutes until it sounds hollow when tapped.
8. Transfer to a rack and cool for 10 minutes or so before eating

Soda bread is best eaten immediately after that initial cooling – but if that doesn’t work out, it’s still great for a day or so. It does NOT keep particularly well.

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