Carrot Soda Bread

Each Thursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast -- because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: The quickest soda bread you can make -- with a bonus serving of vegetables.

There is really nothing quite so lovely as home-baked bread, but yeast breads are a bit tricky. Yeast is alive and can be temperamental; you have to get to know its personality before you work with it, because it will behave differently from day to day. Plus, there’s the whole time thing -- sure, much of it is hands-off wait time, so it’s not hard, but it does take planning ahead. And let’s face it: Planning ahead does not always happen.

Soda bread was invented, I do believe, for those moments when your soul longs for fresh bread, but your mind did not plan ahead. A basic soda bread is so quick and easy to pull together -- you can practically have a loaf in the oven by the time a bread-related thought fully forms in your mind. Thirty or forty minutes later, a gorgeous, crusty loaf is yours.

More: This yogurt bread will also be ready in under an hour -- and it's a cinch to make. 

This loaf is particularly easy. The recipe is downright austere: It has no butter or oil, no eggs or sugar. You dump some flour, salt, and baking soda in a bowl; stir in grated carrots, raisins, and buttermilk; dump it in a pan, and bake. You end up with a fantastic sweet-savory loaf, flecked with orange confetti (or if you’re using multicolored carrots, you get bits of purple and green as well, which is fun).

If you are expecting the kind of carrots-in-baked-goods flavor you get in a carrot cake or carrot muffin, you will be surprised -- that flavor is really cinnamon, and you won’t find it here. The flavor in this bread is pure carrot, the flavor of soil and starch, and it’s quite wonderful. Especially when spread thickly with butter. Add a smidge of sharp cheddar, plus some milky coffee or tea, and breakfast is served.

Carrot Soda Bread

Makes one 9-inch(ish) loaf

4 cups flour (white or a mix of white and whole-wheat)
2 teaspoons baking soda (or shall we call it bicarbonate?)
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups shredded carrots
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup raisins

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here. 

Photos by Emily Vikre