Six-seed Soda Bread Recipe

Inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's soda bread recipe, this version is made with a blend of spelt flour and all-purpose flour. The dough is littered with seeds - sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, flax seeds, and fennel seeds. It bakes into a perfect, rustic, crusty loaf of bread with relatively little effort.

Six-seed Soda Bread

I finally had a chance to sit down this morning and sort through the pile of notes, menus, books, and magazines I brought back from my trip to Portland. There is a loaf of six-seed soda bread baking in the oven, a slab of butter on the counter waiting for it. I was thinking I'd share some highlights (and a couple photos) from the trip to Oregon, write up the soda bread recipe for you, then give the pot of left-over soup waiting on the back burner the signal that it's time for lunch.

Six Seed Soda Bread Recipe

If you find yourself planning a trip to Portland, you can have a look at some of the places I visited the last time I was there. I revisited a few of those on this trip, and made it to a handful of new places as well. There are also lots of great suggestions from you all in the comments section.

Six Seed Soda Bread Recipe

One of the highlights of the trip was getting outside Portland a bit. The area surrounding the city is beautiful, and we spent an entire day driving along two-lane back roads, pulling over to see waterfalls, gorges, bridges, small towns, and off-beat houses for sale. Here's a shot where Wayne surprised me while I was taking the previous picture.

Six Seed Soda Bread Recipe

On the food front, I continue to love lunch at Clyde Common, and would go back there everyday if proximity permitted. They had a buttermilk-dressed wheat berry salad on the menu that stole my heart, and an Upright Brewing Co. Farmhouse Rye Ale on tap that stole my craving for any other beer that week.

We popped over to the Little Red Bike Cafe early one morning - had fantastic coffee, a hearty breakfast, and a nice chat with Evan before heading out in the rain, and then went to stock up on an unreasonable amount of salt at The Meadow, again. Moxie Rx wasn't open during our stay, but Nancye (the owner) is an old friend of ours, and we were able to meet up with her for brunch the next day at Tasty & Sons. Also loved Navarre - their pearled farro, red celery, and parsley salad in particular. Another night we walked from the hotel downtown to Indish, and had one of the best, and most thoughtfully prepared Indian meals I've had in some time - bright, fresh, flavorful - really great.

I packed my suitcase with a number of books and publications to bring home. I bought the new issue of MIX, a smartly-done magazine focusing on Portland's food and drink culture (here's a link to their subscribe page in case you're interested). I snagged a copy of Edible Portland, a copy of Reza Mahammad's Rice, Spice, and all Things Nice, and a copy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage everyday.

Six Seed Soda Bread Recipe

The soda bread recipe in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's book jumped out at me the first time I flipped through the pages. I make soda bread quite often (my favorite is actually a rye version) - it comes together in no time, with a small handful of ingredients, and you can have a loaf in the oven in under ten minutes. With a few minor tweaks to his recipe, I've also been enjoying Hugh's seeded, whole-grain flour version over the past couple of weeks. This soda bread is made with a blend of spelt flour and all-purpose flour, the dough is littered with seeds - sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, flax seeds, and fennel seeds. It takes on a nice crunchy crust, finished with more seeds on top. I like it in the morning slathered with bit of farmers cheese drizzled with honey, for lunch (like today) along with a bowl of soup, and leftovers make good croutons. If you're convinced you can't bake bread, I'd like to encourage you to give this a shot - at the very least you'll be out a bit of flour, some buttermilk, baking soda and some seeds. The upshot is you'll be able to make fresh bread any time you like.

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Six-seed Soda Bread Recipe

I've been enjoying this combination of seeds, but feel free to experiment with other combinations if you prefer, based on what you have on hand, or what is available in your area. You can also make this with whole-wheat flour in place of the spelt flour.

2 1/2 tablespoons EACH sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds,
poppy seeds, flax seeds

1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 3/4 cup / 9 oz / 250 g spelt flour
2 cups / 9 oz / 250 g unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 3/4 cup / 14 oz / 400 ml buttermilk
a bit of extra buttermilk/milk

Preheat your oven to 400F / 205C. Place a rack in the center of the oven. In a small bowl combine all the seeds and set aside.

Sift the flours, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Stir in all but 2 tablespoons of the seeds. Make a well in the flour, pour in the buttermilk, and stir until the dough just comes together. If you need to add an extra splash of buttermilk because the dough is too dry, you can. As Hugh says, "Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead lightly for about a minute, just long enough to pull it together into a loose ball but no longer - you need to get it into the oven while the baking soda is still doing its stuff."

Place the dough on a lightly floured baking sheet and mark it with a deep cross across the top, cutting two-thirds of the way through the loaf with a serrated knife. Brush with buttermilk and sprinkle with the remaining seeds, making sure plenty of seeds make it down into the cracks.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, or until the bread is golden crusted on top and bottom (you may want to move the oven rack up for the last 15 minute if you need more color on the top of the loaf). Cool on a wire rack.

Makes a single loaf.

Adapted from River Cottage everyday by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, published by Bloomsbury.

Prep time: 10 minutes

If you make this recipe, I'd love to see it - tag it #101cookbooks on Instagram!

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Comments

Yum! This would be such an upgrade next St. Patrick's Day.

Coco @ Opera Girl Cooks

That bread is positively gorgeous. Total showstopper.

The Nervous Cook

This soda bread recipe is unreal looking. It's literally perfect, I'm envious of your photos.

Katrina

Your photos make me eager to head out west to Oregon again. Beautiful. And the bread looks delicious. Can't wait to try it.

Margy@hidethecheese

This seeded version of soda bread has me salivating. Here's some interesting foodlore re soda bread: the Irish customarily made the cross in dough before baking to "let the angels out" to help it rise.

Andrea @ Fork Fingers Chopsticks

Beautiful photos and beautiful bread! This is my kind of bread,,, easy, quick and full of texture. Yum!

Katie@Cozydelicious

was just about to nod off at my desk when i came accross this image...brightened my day thinking about the smells toasty seedy bread mmm

af @ .the food.

Oh my, that looks amazing!

Simply Life

totally on my 'I have to try this' list (both the bread and a trip to Prtland I guess)! Did you ever try to prepare this bread using natural yeast (sourdough)? I am thinking about substituting baking soda with it... Thanks!

Albicocca

I can just imagine this with a thick layer of fresh butter on - delicious! One thing: buttermilk isn't that easy to come by in the UK; as a substitute I use very low fat yoghurt (the kind you get from Indian food shops) mixed half and half with water. Other plain yoghurt would work if it's not too thick. Much cheaper and easier than seeking out buttermilk!

Judes

It looks beautiful - do you think it would veganise ok by subbing non-dairy milk and a splash of vinegar for the buttermilk? Would love to break out of my plain yeasty wholemeal bread rut.

Sangeeta

I love multi-grain breads! (Though their "healthiness" may be just a little overrated... remember that multigrain doesn't equal whole grain! Not in this case, though. :D) I love their texture and the big crunch of the seeds on top. It looks absolutely lovely! :) Wei-Wei

Wei-Wei

I love the use of seeds in bread. Yours looks delicious. I also love the shots with the waterfall!

tobias cooks!

This looks so great! I like the idea of adding fennel seeds to soda bread. I add currants to mine when I want to make it special. Thanks for the new spin. :)

A Teenage Gourmet

This recipe looks very easy to make. I can't wait to try it. I love earthy breads! Thanks for sharing the recipe.

Cynthia McIntyre

I love soda bread and will be printing this one with the seeds.

shannon abdollmohammadi

That bread looks amazing! Very earthy indeed. I'm a big fan of seedy breads. Yum! :) Jenn

Jenn (Jenn's Menu and Lifestyle Blog)

Wow. Wow. Wow. And did I mention...wow? Can't wait to toast some of this and top with avocado. Thanks:)

the French

Oh I'm definitely going to try this bread - I'm a bit of a bird when it comes to anything with seeds! Beautiful photos of Portland :-) x

kathleen

I've always wanted to visit Portland. Your photos make it look so enchanting. The soda bread is beautiful as well- I love the 'six seed' version as traditional Irish soda bread can often be lacking a little something (although I still love it!)

Tokyo Terrace

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