My St. Patrick's Day Sodabread

I did not grow up with the sweet taste of Irish soda bread in my mouth, not even on traditional "Irish" occasions such as St. Patrick's Day. Since my mother, my maternal grandmother and my paternal grandmother were all widows, they had little time for fancy cooking or baking. Therefore, I know little of the traditional recipes of either the Scottish or Irish side of my family. My mother had most of her cooking lessons from the Italian woman who lived upstairs, so there is a mean tomato sauce in the family.

Yet, there is something to be said for genetic inheritance, because, somewhere in my 20s, I found myself craving the ancestral foods I had never tasted. I could pass on the haggis, live without the boiled beef and potatoes, but the idea of scones and soda bread became a mild obsession. Living in Milltown, New Jersey, where the famous Shanahan's Bakery has resided for decades, meant that I could indulge my craving at will as long as I got their early enough on St. Patrick's Day. But soon, the need to bake my own became overwhelming. As the non-baking women of my family looked on from the great beyond, I started making soda bread. My children soon caught my obsession, and I could barely get a loaf out of the oven before it was devoured warm.

The page the recipe is on is yellowed, dog-eared and stained - bearing the mark of many flour-covered fingers. And now, as my children tentatively enter the adult world and feel their own genetic food cravings, I will pass it down. Someday their children may smile and say "its just like grandma used to bake." And all our generations of Celtic women will look on from beyond and smile.

Recipe follows

2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
¾ cup buttermilk (for overly dry mix, add more buttermilk, one teaspoon at a time)

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Cut butter into this mix using 2 knives.
Add buttermilk.
Mix to form a soft dough.
knead the dough on a floured board for about 3-4 minutes.
Form dough into a flat round shape of about 7"
Place in a light oiled round cake pan
Cut an X in the dough center, about ½" deep
Bake in 375-degree oven for 40 minutes
Cool on a wire rack.

Serve with butter, marmalade, or deliciously alone!