Saturday, 26 November 2011

Magic seeds

I bake a great deal of bread; several loaves a week for roughly the last ten years.  But this week I added sunflower seeds to soda bread for the first time, and made a new and startling discovery. 

Magic seeds

The children and I got a massive shock when we broke open the just-baked loaf yesterday after school.  We stared at the bread and then at each other.

"What HAPPENED??" asked O, horrified.

"Cool!" shouted C.

Rather than slather butter and jam on to it as we had planned we went rumamging on the internet.  We learnt that if you add sunflower seeds to soda bread, they turn a deep and vivid shade of green because the acid in them reacts with the alkali in the bicarbonate of soda.  The internet also claimed that they were still perfectly safe to eat, so with varying levels of apprehension we slathered butter and jam on, and tucked in anyway.

The internet was right - they are absolutely fine to eat. I was right too, in that sunflower seeds make soda bread even more delicious.  I do find the shade of green (which has turned almost black in the day since I made the loaf) rather unnerving though.  Today I went back to what I know and made a plain wholemeal tin loaf.

Magic seeds

6 comments:

  1. Perfect for Halloween though!

    Do you have a favourite soda bread recipe? Some days yeast just is too much like hard work ...

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  2. oh yes, what recipe do you use? I love soda bread.x

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  3. A frequent soda bread maker here ... Hugh FW's recipe for a six seed version is really tasty.

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  4. I love a good soda bread when we've left it too late to make yeasted bread for dinner. Hadn't even occurred to me to add stuff to it...

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  5. Do you know I have never ever eaten soda bread. I must try it. Although I might take a rain check on the seeds - my son would love them though!

    I was just catching up on your posts and noticed that you have invested in a slow cooker. Is it still going okay? It's something that I have been pondering over buying for years but I'm terrible for buying these things and then finding out they're more trouble than they're worth! Is it simple enough to clean? x

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