soda bread

Am making this recipe for soda bread, although technically with the addition of raisins, it should be called Spotted Dog or something. I tasted the batter, as is the chef’s privilege and I think it will be good. I really like baking these quick breads. Beer bread is a favorite to make, because it literally takes about 10 seconds of prep time, and it also holds up nicely to the addition of everything from grapes to cheese and scallions.

While I love the smell of baking bread, and I love knowing that I can whip up fresh bread from the contents of my (theoretical) pantry, I don’t really subscribe to the homemade bread snobbery that sometimes afflicts the culinarily inclined. Bread from the bakery and from farmer’s markets are often ridiculously cheap! While certainly, flour and eggs and salt, etc. add up to mere pennies, the addition of other ingredients and flavors (especially if you are trying to go the all fresh route) can be not only expensive, but time consuming, in preparation and in shopping. Since I don’t have really great, well-stocked supermarkets near me, that requires a lengthy subway trip to get certain ingredients. It is at that point that I say, it is completely well worth it to just buy bread.

There is a bakery a couple of blocks from me that often has really great bread. You have to get there while it is still morning, or there will be very little left, and it will be stale. But they also have a chocolate cake that is fabulous, and the cookies are also excellent – and relatively cheap. I am all for making things at home, but I hate being made to feel guilty for buying things that I could very well make myself. Most of the time, when I eat out at restaurants, I will feel really guilty about ordering something that I could definitely prepare for myself at home for at least half the cost. But then, I have to remember that food should be fun and nourishing. Screw the guilt. At the end of the day, who cares?

Except, these days, everyone is parroting phrases like, “sustainability” and “locavores” and carbon footprints. And I just read The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals recently, which, while being a good read, also scared me. Because, corn! It’s way evil.