In spring 2020, with yeast sold out across Germany, a country famous for its bread started baking ours. The Irish Times reported that “Sodabrot”, plain Irish soda bread, had overtaken sourdough as Germany’s hottest lockdown recipe. Here is how it happened, what the German papers made of it, and a brown soda bread you can have in the oven in minutes.
When yeast replaced toilet paper
Derek Scally, the Irish Times correspondent in Berlin, wrote on 8 May 2020 that while Irish hobby bakers were battling sourdough, hungry Germans were playing the same game in the other direction. Germans, he noted, are the world masters of sourdough and other breads. But the panic-buying of the second wave of Covid-19 had made yeast, in his words, the new impossible-to-get product, replacing toilet paper.
Soda bread needs no yeast, so it was the obvious answer. The weekly Die Zeit introduced its readers to a loaf that is “crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside”. The daily Die Welt joined in with a line any busy baker will understand: between realising you have not enough bread in the house and sliding a loaf into the oven, you need around 15 minutes.
A West Cork goat farmer’s recipe
Die Zeit’s recipe, according to the Irish Times, was a reproduction of a hand-written one from a West Cork goat farmer, handed down through generations. The writer, Nicole Quint, told readers that Irish cooking was “always one that couldn’t depend on a well-stocked pantry”, and that working within those limits had shaped the national cuisine. Her loaf even included porridge oats, which the Irish Times called an interesting addition.
Her advice on handling will sound familiar to anyone who has read our story of the cross in the dough: do not knead, and “treat it like a glowing coal”. And do not forget the cross. Quint suggested it may come from a traditional Catholic blessing, or it may release the fairies. Her joke, quoted in the Irish Times: everyone in Ireland knows someone who knows someone who heard of people who did not cut a cross and were taken in their sleep, though 40 years later.
Why the loaf is younger than you think
Die Zeit also gave its German readers a short history. As the Irish Times summarises it, soda, the bread’s raising agent, was brought back in the 1800s from across the Atlantic, where Native Americans used it in their own baking. Ireland’s traditional bread, it adds, only shook off its Famine-era reputation in the 1960s, when EU membership brought a flood of foreign breads from baguette to panini. More recently, bakers have been fighting back with granny’s recipe updated with stout, molasses syrup or even seaweed. We cover the 19th-century story in why Ireland started baking soda bread in the 1840s.
The one warning from Berlin
Die Welt had one caution: soda bread is hard and dry on the second day. “At least that’s what I read,” the paper added. “In our household soda bread has never survived more than 24 hours.” Ours rarely does either. If a loaf does last, toast the slices. For more loaves, see our Irish brown soda bread recipe and our free soda bread guide.
Bake it the way Irish kitchens do ☘️
Get The Love Ireland Guide No. 001: Irish Soda Bread, our free soda bread guide, with the method, the troubleshooting and the traditions.
How to make brown soda bread with oats (makes 1 loaf, serves 8)
This is our own simple brown loaf with porridge oats, in the spirit of the one the Germans fell for. It takes about 10 minutes to mix and 40 to 45 minutes to bake.
Ingredients
- 350 g wholemeal flour
- 150 g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 50 g porridge oats, plus a handful for the top
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 425 to 450 ml buttermilk
Method
- Heat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan). Dust a baking tray with flour.
- Mix the wholemeal flour, plain flour, oats, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a large bowl. Sieve in the bicarbonate if it is lumpy.
- Make a well in the centre and pour in most of the buttermilk. Mix quickly with one hand, fingers apart, until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Add the rest of the buttermilk only if the flour is dry.
- Tip the dough onto a floured surface and shape it gently into a round, about 4 cm thick. Do not knead.
- Place on the tray, cut a deep cross, almost to the base, and scatter a few oats on top.
- Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath.
- Cool on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes, then serve with plenty of butter.
Have you ever baked soda bread, or would you leave it to your granny?
Sources
- ‘Enriching for the soul’: Irish soda bread becomes lockdown hit in Germany, Derek Scally, The Irish Times, 8 May 2020
Checked November 2026.
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