Brown Irish Soda Bread with Currants

Brown Irish soda bread with currants: Brown bread meets currant scone – healthy, sweet, and filling. Especially when topped with a bit of good butter or clotted cream.

Ever since I spent a couple of weeks in Ireland as a kid, I’ve been a big fan of brown soda bread. It took me a while to find a way to replicate the recipe – but now I often make soda bread over the weekends to go alongside my eggs, or pretty much any food we’re having that weekend. (Here’s my go-to plain brown Irish soda bread recipe.)

Brown soda bread is kind of the ideal breakfast bread. It’s the perfect base for eggs over toast because the texture makes slicing up the egg toast super easy. It is soft and easy to cut but also substantial enough that it holds up against the egg. I like to eat mine with a thin slice of Parmesan, topped with a fried or poached egg and some chives, and (sometimes) even a bit of Serrano ham.

My perfect breakfast. Add a side of tomatoes or some fruit, and I am the happiest clam of them all. Who can say no to that?

Why Add Currants (or raisins) to the Perfect Breakfast Bread?

So why would I mess with the perfect bread recipe?

We impulse bought some Irish soda bread around St. Patrick’s day. It was filled with caraway seeds and raisins. I toasted it and topped it with clotted cream (which is a bit sweeter than butter, so it works really well with the raisins to make the bread feel like a treat). It was so delicious. I ate far too much.

And then I realized I had better try to create something similar because it was all I could think about for a couple of weeks afterward. And there was no more of the bread in stock after St. Patrick’s day weekend! (Some people have told me I’m a little too “food-oriented.”)

The next closest thing in flavor was a currant scone.

Healthy Sweet Bread

So I bought myself some scones after that – and then began the problem of an intense scone craving. I easily devoured several raspberry rhubarb scones on Mother’s Day. But, let’s be real, they’re basically cake. I can’t be doing that every weekend.

This bread has the fantastic feature of satisfying my urge to eat all the scones I can find. The bread delicious with clotted cream, and the currants are sweetly reminiscent of currant scones. But, unlike scones, this bread is more satisfying because the oats fill you up and keep you full! You’re getting quite a bit of fiber actually. So I don’t feel terrible about eating a couple of slices of this bread. Especially if it already feels like a “splurge.”

100% Whole Grain Bread

Also, this bread is made completely out of whole wheat and oats! (Here’s why I want to eat more whole wheat, ideally stone ground.) I don’t think you would suspect that it was 100% whole grain if you ate some. It’s moist and has a great soft texture with a bit of chew from the oats.

Is This Like Commercial Whole Wheat Bread With Raisins?

This brown Irish soda bread is sweetened with currants (or raisins) and just a bit of honey. So it’s not nearly as sweet as a commercial whole wheat bread with raisins – which is usually quite sweet and sometimes has cinnamon added.

The oat and honey combo also gives the bread a great sweet flavor without being overpowering. Something about oats and honey just works really well and you can get more sweet flavor with less when you add oats into the mix. But this bread is definitely not the sickly sweet flavor that you sometimes find with whole wheat raisin bread.

Now, on to the recipe!

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