This gluten-free Irish soda bread is a really healthy option for your St. Patrick’s Day celebrations or whenever you happen to need an awesome carrier to butter, jam, cheese, or just enjoy delicious bread on your breakfast table. Instead of using harmful starch for replacing gluten-filled flours, this bread uses coconut flour and psyllium — fantastic and healthy low-carb alternatives to rice flour, tapioca flour and other questionable starches which too often are used for preparing gluten-free bread. Because of psyllium, just remember to drink plenty of water when eating this bread.
Tips for making the gluten-free Irish soda bread
There are not too many phases when making this bread. Just mix the dry ingredients and wet ingredients and then combine them. It might be a good idea to whisk vigorously while adding the dry ingredient mixture to the wet ingredients to prevent lumps, but to be honest, I’ve always just tossed in the dry ingredients at once and never had any problems with lumping.
But let’s take a look how to make this beautiful bread:
Take a small bowl and add there the coconut flour…
…psyllium…
…baking soda…
…and the salt if you use it.
Mix well.
Take a clean large bowl and add there the eggs (gee, the broken yolk looks so bad in the photo)…
…and the buttermilk.
Mix well.
I prefer wire whisk — or I think this is actually called gravy whisk what I’m using. Anyway, you see the shape below.
Mix until well mixed.
Add the coconut flour mixture to the egg mixture.
Whisk really well to break all lumps.
The dough becomes thick very quickly. You can wait for 5 minutes that the dough reaches the final thickness.
Then just grab the dough with clean hands…
…and form it into a big ball.
Place the ball on a greased ovenproof plate and flatten the ball so that it’s some 1–1 1/2 inches (2.5–4 cm) thick.
Cut two deep crisscrossing lines through the center of the loaf with wet hands.
Bake the loaf in the preheated oven for 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the thickest part comes out dry.
- 1/3 cup = 80 ml coconut flour
- 2 tablespoons psyllium husk powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 organic free-range eggs (use extra large if you can get)
- 1/3 cup = 80 ml buttermilk
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C).
- Grease an ovenproof plate with butter.
- Combine the coconut flour, psyllium, baking soda (and the salt if you use it) in a small bowl. Mix well.
- Combine the eggs and the buttermilk in a clean large bowl. Whisk well.
- Add the coconut flour mixture to the egg mixture. Whisk really well to break all lumps.
- Let the dough thicken for 5 minutes.
- Grab the dough with clean hands and form it into a big ball.
- Place the ball on the greased ovenproof plate.
- Bake in the oven for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the thickest part comes out dry.
If I wanted to make this dairy free and nut free how mucg momcoconut milk and ACV should I use?
I would expect 1/4 cup = 60 ml coconut milk and 1 tablespoon ACV should do the trick.
This is so lovely! I made this exactly as written but one of my extra large eggs turned out to be a double or yolk one(!) so I don’t know if that affected the texture as this didn’t rise too much. Nonetheless, it was delicious and neither coconut-ey nor eggy at all, which was a pleasant surprise! I don’t mind either, but it was nice to have something that tasted like real bread for a change Thank you so much, Elviira, I will definitely make this again.
Wonderful! So great to hear you liked it 🙂
Just tried this and was really disappointed with the results. Followed the directions except the substition of lemon juice and milk for buttermilk. Tastes nothing like bread of any sort: just has a strong egg flavour and an unpalatable texture. It didn’t rise at all either.
Sorry to hear. The recipe is developed for buttermilk, not for milk and lemon juice, though.
That’s how you make buttermilk. Milk and lemon juice or vinegar. My grandma taught me this ages ago. Now I just use heavy cream instead of milk to liwer the carbs.k
Yep, that’s the traditional way to do it.
This sounds Fabulous!!! Can you make it in a loaf???
Thanks, Kim! Didn’t try out, but I think it should work.
Thank you for posting this recipe! It has been my go to low carb bread for a year now. I add ground nutritional yeast to it to get some yeasty flavor that I missed from bread. I also use the whey liquid from homemade yogurt instead of the buttermilk and it works great! Always looking for ways to use the whey!
Hi Shari, thank you for your comment and sharing your variations! Yes, it’s always great to find ways to use whey; good to know whey works in this recipe, too!
So happy I found your recipe! I’ve been disappointed with other low carb breads but this Irish Soda Bread is perfect! Thanks so much!!
Thank you so much, Vickie! I’m happy you like it!
I made this bread today and followed your recipe exactly with the exception of the buttermilk. I didn’t have buttermilk on hand so I used your instructions for diluting sour cream as a substitute. I flattened the dough to about an inch in thickness and it cooked in about 40 minutes. Mine turned out great with the exception of a slight bitter taste. Do you have any idea what would have caused this? I would love to make it again but the bitterness is a bit unpleasant.
Thank you!
Hi Judy, thanks for trying out the recipe! I guess the best way to get rid of the bitter taste is to use unsweetened almond milk or regular milk instead of buttermilk/sour cream, and replace the soda with baking powder. The baking soda needs something acidic, and if you remove the acidic part i.e. buttermilk/sour cream, the bread won’t rise that much. So, my suggestion is almond milk + baking powder instead of buttermilk + baking soda. Btw, almond milk is naturally lower in carbs than regular milk or buttermilk. How does this option sound?
I made this a few times and it was lovely. Have you any idea on calories per slice please ?
Hi Catherine, great to hear you liked it! There are 56 kcal per slice if the bread makes 8 slices.
Hi I would just like to know the carbs in this bread looks delicious thanks
Hi Maria, the entire bread has 13.3 g net carbs and if you have 8 slices it makes 1.7 g net carbs per slice.
Hello. I cannot seem to find any Buttermilk in supermarkets here. Is there a substitute that I could use for Buttermilk please, thank you
Hi Debra, I’m terribly sorry for not replying earlier, my blog blocked me out and I couldn’t log in for several days! Now things work, finally. Yes, you can make buttermilk substitute by using regular milk and lemon juice. Here are instructions for that: http://frugalliving.about.com/od/condimentsandspices/r/Buttermilk_Sub.htm.
hello, I am really wanting to try this bread but I cannot find and buttermilk, is there a substiute for this that I could use, thank you
I saw this posted on FB this morning and decided to make it right away.
It’s absolutely gorgeous! I am very suspicious of coconut flour as it has a very strong flavour but the other ingredients tamed it.
I will make it again. I love the fact it’s so simple to make and has so few ingredients.
Thank you!
Hi Diane, thank you for trying it out! I’m so happy to hear that you like it!
This looks soooooo great! Being German, I love all things bread! This looks just like the real thing, fantastic! Do you think I could sub the buttermilk with almond milk and vinegar?
Hallo Antonia! Ich freue mich, dass Dir das Rezept gefällt! (That’s about my German, even my son speaks better German than me… my husband is German 🙂 ) but the answer is yes (my plan has been to develop dairy-free recipe for this bread, and I would substitute the buttermilk with coconut milk and vinegar; I bet that almond milk would work as well). Please let me know how it worked out if you try it!
Hey again! Just wanted to follow up on my previous comment! First of all, I was super surprised when you replied in german! So cool haha! So I did try this with almond milk and apple cider vinegar, and it worked really well! I kind of just eyeballed it…My bread didn’t rise as much, but I think that’s because my baking soda was a little stale. The texture was still PERFECT and it tasted delicious! This will be my go-to bread from now on! I made a beautiful grilled cheese sandwich with it! Thank you so much for the awesome recipe and I hope you have a great day!
Hallo Antonia! Perfect, so great to hear that the bread worked well with almond milk and ACV, and thus makes a great dairy-free option! I’m actually planning to make this bread for Easter and add some Brotgewürz (from Konzelmann, I’ve ordered that from Germany; it contains Koriander, Fenchel, Kümmel und Anis), it reminds me very much of that Easter bread that we have here in Finland during Easter. I haven’t had that bread for years, but now I’m going to make a gluten-free low-carb version!