Mary Berry’s soda bread is a yeast-free loaf made with equal weights of plain white and wholemeal flour. It takes bicarbonate of soda, salt, rubbed-in butter and 400ml of buttermilk. It bakes at 200°C/Fan 180°C/Gas 6 for 30 to 35 minutes.
Berry’s headnote in Cooks the Perfect (2014) calls it a loaf for days when you want bread on the table quickly. She says the buttermilk gives a soft-textured dough with a unique flavour. She even prints a figure for the whole loaf: 1,762 calories.
The cross on top isn’t decoration, and she explains why in the same book. Cut it 1cm deep and it opens out as the loaf bakes. That’s what lets the bread cook through to the centre.
Mary Berry Soda Bread Recipe
Course: SidesCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy1
servings10
minutes30
minutes1.762
kcalThe version from Cooks the Perfect (2014), the book where Berry stops to explain her technique rather than just listing steps. Butter rubbed into the flour, no kneading, no proving, and a loaf on the table inside an hour.
Ingredients
20 g (¾ oz) butter (room temperature), plus extra for greasing
225 g (8 oz) plain white flour, plus extra for dusting and sprinkling
225 g (8 oz) plain wholemeal flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
400 ml (14 fl oz) buttermilk
Directions
- Preheat:Preheat the oven to 200°C (fan 180°C/400°F/Gas 6). Lightly grease a baking sheet with a little butter.
- Mix:Put both the flours in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingertips. Stir in the bicarbonate of soda and salt. Pour in the buttermilk and 2 tablespoons of hand-warm water. Briefly mix the ingredients. The dough should be very soft and sticky, but still easy to shape. Add another tablespoon of water if needed.
- Shape:Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and gather into a neat round, about 20cm (8 in) in diameter (it needn’t be too smooth). Place the loaf on the baking sheet and cut a 1cm (½ in) deep cross in the top. Sprinkle the top of the loaf with a little white flour.
- Bake:Bake for 30-35 minutes or until risen and golden brown. Tap the base of the loaf to see if it is cooked: it should sound hollow. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
FAQs
The dough feels far too sticky. Have I done something wrong?
No, that’s the dough Berry wants. She describes it as very soft and sticky but still easy to shape. If it isn’t, she tells you to add another tablespoon of water.
What matters more is how little you touch it. In her Keys to perfection panel she says a few turns with your hands are all that’s required. The less you handle the dough, she writes, the lighter the bread will be. In Foolproof Cooking (2016) she puts it another way: treat it like a scone mixture rather than a bread dough, the same light hand she uses for the scone topping on her rhubarb and orange cobbler.
Do I have to use buttermilk?
Buttermilk is doing chemistry here, not just adding liquid. Berry explains in her ingredient notes that bicarbonate of soda reacts with natural acids present in ingredients like buttermilk. She describes buttermilk itself as pasteurised skimmed milk treated with a culture to give the acidity that suits breads and scones.
If you can’t find it, she gives her own swap in Baking Bible (2010), a different book. That recipe takes 150ml milk mixed with 150ml natural yoghurt in place of 300ml buttermilk, plus about 6 tablespoons of tepid water. The totals land close to this loaf, which uses 400ml buttermilk and 2 tablespoons of water, so you’d need to scale the yoghurt mix up a little.
How deep should the cross be?
Berry says 1cm (½ in) here, cut with a sharp knife dipped in flour so it doesn’t drag through the soft dough. Flouring the blade sounds fussy until you try it without, and the knife pulls the top of the loaf out of shape.
She isn’t consistent about depth across her books, which tells you it’s a judgement rather than a rule. Baking Bible asks for a shallow cross. Her AGA book asks for a deep one, and Simple Comforts says to cut about halfway through the dough.
How do I know when it’s baked?
Tap the base. Berry’s test is that it should sound hollow, and in Foolproof Cooking she sharpens that to hollow rather than dense. It’s the same check she uses across her yeasted loaves and rolls, so it’s worth learning once.
If it isn’t hollow, she has a fix she uses on the loaves in her Cookery Course (2015): put it back in the oven upside down for a few more minutes. Her Baking Bible soda bread builds that into the method, turning the loaf upside-down after 30 minutes for a further 10 to 15. Her AGA book adds a cooling tip worth stealing, wrapping the baked loaf in a clean tea towel so the crust doesn’t harden too much.
Can I make it all white, or add oats?
Both, and both are her own. Baking Bible uses 450g strong white flour with no wholemeal and no butter at all, so the loaf is paler and lighter. Simple Comforts goes the other way, 350g wholemeal to 150g white, with a tablespoon of runny honey stirred in.
The oats note belongs to that Baking Bible version too, though it transfers straight across. Replace 50g (2 oz) of the flour with the same quantity of porridge oats. Her reason is texture, and nothing else in the recipe changes.
Does Berry have a savoury version?
She does, and it’s a good one. Her Olive and Herb Soda Bread in Foolproof Cooking (2016) folds in 50g chopped sun-dried tomatoes, 75g chopped pitted green olives and 3 tablespoons of snipped chives. It bakes hotter, at 220°C/200°C fan/Gas 7 for 30 minutes, and instead of a cross she divides the dome into quarters, cutting halfway through.
Either loaf wants something to sit beside. The plain one is made for her leek and potato soup, sliced thick while still slightly warm. Cut thinner and buttered, it also holds up under her smoked salmon starter, which is the more traditional Irish pairing.
