Rachel Khoo's no knead cheese and onion loaf
There’s no better therapy than a bit of homemade bread making. But if you’re not in the mood to build and nurture a homemade starter but want to dabble in a little loaf making, a soda bread is your go to.
- Preparation Time15 mins
- Cooking Time45 mins
- Serves1
- DifficultyEasy
For the bread
For the tapenade
Equipment
Instructions
Preheat oven to 180c fan. Peel and finely grate the carrots. Add to a bowl with the buttermilk, grated cheese and fried onion. Whisk the remaining ingredients together and make a well. Add wet ingredients and combine with your hands. Dust the surface with a little extra flour, add the dough and squash into a ball and place on to a lined baking tray. Using a knife or pastry scraper, make a criss cross in the top of the loaf about 2 cm deep. Bake 35-45 minutes or until the bread when tapped on the back sounds hollow.
Alternatively you can divide the dough into 10 tennis sized balls and bake as buns for about 20-30 minutes or until the rolls when tapped on the back sound hollow.
To make the tapenade, crush the olives, garlic and anchovy to a rough paste (tapenade) using a mortar and pestle or an electric blender.
Serve the soda bread warm from the oven with the tapenade on the side.
Tips
- I like the mix of wholemealand white flour here, but if you don’t have one or the other just make up the quantity in what you have available.
- I like a firm mature cheese for this recipe, try a cheddar, gruyère, comté.
- When it comes to soda bread, there’s no need for a long prove,the baking soda will react to the acidity in the buttermilk which will give you the rise you are after.
- When it comes to kneading, you aren't looking to develop the gluten in a soda bread, that would give a tougher result, think of it more as a very wholesome crumbly cake and handle it lightly, it goes excellently with everything from smoked salmon, to dunking in savoury soups or stews.
- Scatter a few rolled oats or sprinkle a few seeds over the top before baking if it takes your fancy.
- Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a carbonate or bicarbonate and a weak acid. The base and acid are prevented from reacting prematurely by the inclusion of a buffer such as cornstarch. I used this instead because I didn’t have bicarbonate of soda. If you have bicarbonate of soda use 2 tsp instead of 4 tsp of baking powder.
- If you can’t get hold of it, you can substitute it for a 50 50 ratio of yoghurt to whole milk, or substitute it for yoghurt with a tbsp of lemon juice. The acidity is what you are after to activate your baking agent.