Easy bread recipes: how to make cornbread and oatmeal soda bread

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Bread

Step by step directions by Dan Lepard for breads that can be made in an hour

How to make apricot jam

Dan Lepard

Sun 17 May 2020 03.00 EDT

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The transformation that bread flour takes from the white powder in the bag to the ripped, puffed loaf drawn scorched and bronzed from the oven is one of the most extreme makeovers you get in cooking.

A ribeye steak, a gutted fish? Slap them on a hot grill. Salad needs the merest tweak, a smidgen of vinegary oil and salt. But turning flour into bread needs effort, time, alchemic fiddling by enzymes, carbonates, yeasts and microflora while prodding and twisting its lumpen shape into respectable life.

Though we might boast that simple bread is all we need for a well-fed life, we also know – deep down – that creating that “simple bread” requires more labour and skill than, say, the heralded steak and salad it’s quietly placed beside on the plate.

Normally our lives appear too hectic to take on some recipes, when we know really that they’re no match for the convenience of eating out or a delivery. Take the flour-to-bread challenge. Buying a baking book is a little like investing in that gym membership that starts with the best intentions then peters out when our weekends disappear under emails, unfinished chores and promises to meet with friends. So tackling the bag of flour in the cupboard is continually put off.

Until we reach the point we’re at now, mid 2020, when time is the one thing we do have. My guess is that, in this sad and frightening coronavirus wave, these longed-for skills offer some ballast to stop us falling completely.

Learning to roll a wheat tortilla that verges on parchment, or to turn a bubbling bowl of sourdough into a prized loaf, or to make buttery cornbread or a scruffy soda bread; gaining these skills helps distract and focus our minds when the world outside isn’t providing the usual joy.

For most of us, our first befuddled effort fills us with chest-banging pride and be damned anyone who doubts what they see in our first loaf. And, in trying it, we’ve ticked off one of life’s easier complexities, not exactly wrestling tigers but, in kitchen terms, braving the floury beast head on. Giving us the feeling that should our world fall apart we can manage to take the plainest ingredient and create a dazzling meal.

Here are two recipes that can be effortlessly stirred and baked in little more than an hour, giving you a skillet bursting with golden cornbread or a slab of oat soda bread.

Because quick breads like these are, in my book, the swiftest path to baking pride.

Oatmeal soda bread

This is the original quick-and-easy, no-knead bread to serve alongside ice-cold oysters and stout or a glass of ale. For a change, I’ve made this with the coarse oatmeal you get in tins. More expensive, I know. But it gives the bread the best chewy texture and would have been traditional before rolled oats (an American invention from the late 1800s) were widely available in the British Isles. For this recipe I make a sort of porridge and beat the other ingredients through it. It’s baked in a tin, as the mixture is a bit sloppy. In Ireland I’ve only ever seen soda bread as a slab and to me that’s much easier to cut and use.

coarse or pinhead oatmeal 100g
water 225ml
butter or dripping 30g, plus extra for the tin
low-fat plain yogurt 100g
cold milk 200ml
brown sugar 1½ tbsp
wholemeal or spelt flour 325g
bicarbonate of soda 1½ tsp
fine salt ¾ tsp

Place the oatmeal and water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil then remove from the heat, stick the lid on and leave for an hour, adding the butter towards the end. Whisk in the yogurt, milk and sugar until smooth and free of lumps.

Butter an 18–20cm square cake tin and line the base with a square of non-stick baking paper, and heat the oven to 180C fan/gas mark 6. Stir the flour, bicarb and salt into the oatmeal mixture until smooth. Spoon the batter into the tin, cover the top with foil, bake for 15 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for a further 30 minutes until the crust is a good rich brown.

North-south cornbread

The southerners in America like their cornbread made with white cornmeal and lots of it, without any sweetness, whereas in the northern states they like it yellow and fluffy with a little sugar. The small amount of flour used here moderates the chewiness and gives a lighter texture, but with yellow cornmeal and some sugar to add sweetness and a golden colour. Bacon fat is the traditional thing to stir into the mix and rub around the pan, a “must” if you have it, but butter and oil are easier to get hold of. Sliced thinly it’s the perfect accompaniment for hot spicy pork ribs and a bowl of fresh homemade coleslaw.

oil or bacon fat to grease the tin
polenta or coarse yellow cornmeal 225g
strong white flour 75g
fine salt 1 tsp
bicarbonate of soda 1 tsp
caster sugar 50g
low-fat plain yogurt 475g
eggs 2, medium
melted butter or more bacon fat 25g

Get a round ovenproof skillet or baking dish about 20cm in diameter and pour a few tablespoons of oil into it, rubbing a little up the sides to stop the mixture sticking. Place the skillet in the oven and heat it to 180C fan/gas mark 6.

Spoon the polenta, flour, salt, bicarb and sugar into a bowl and mix them together. In another bowl, beat the yogurt with the eggs and melted butter. When the skillet is hot, remove it from the oven and place it on the stovetop. Beat the yogurt mixture evenly through the dry ingredients, and quickly spoon the mixture into the hot skillet. Smooth the top gently then place it back in the oven and bake for 20–25 minutes until it starts to pull away from the sides of the tin. The top won’t have coloured much but the base should be a deep golden brown. Remove from the oven then leave to cool slightly before turning out onto a serving plate.

Easy bread recipes: how to make cornbread and oatmeal soda bread | Bread (2024)

Oatmeal soda bread

North-south cornbread

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