March Gladness: Cheesy Soda Bread - No. 330

A Memphis baker shares her savory recipe with basil and prosciutto for St. Patrick’s Day + book tour updates and CBS Saturday Morning The Dish

WHEN YOU’RE ON BOOK TOUR and traveling to a town that’s not your own, it’s a good idea to know someone. So when I was set to appear at Novel Books in Memphis last fall, the shop owners didn’t hesitate a second to suggest Memphis native Kat Gordon as my conversation partner.

She’s a local baking hero who has been making everyone’s favorite cupcakes and pies for 17 years at Muddy’s Bake Shop, which she named after her grandmother, Jayne Robertson Bond, whose grandchildren called her ‘’Muddy.’’

Muddy was ‘’a Southern bossy-boss lady who worked hard, played hard, and lived life with equal parts grit and glamour,’’ Kat said. Typical of the South, she’d double recipes, preparing one meal for her family and another for neighbors, folks in the hospital, and families with new babies.

Kat’s bakery has lived up to its lofty name. Kat, too, started baking for others with family recipes after she followed in her mother’s footsteps as a realtor but the lure of the kitchen was just too much to resist. With so many orders for her goodies, she outgrew her home space and in 2008 opened a bakery.

Kat Gordon at Muddy’s Bake Shop in Memphis.

As expected, everyone loved meeting the famous Kat at the book signing and hearing her take on my recipes. She baked a batch of the Justine’s cookies from my book and brought them to share.

So before I left town for Mississippi the next morning, I drove over to Muddy’s in the historic Broad Avenue Arts District to see her shop for myself. Broad Avenue used to be the main street of Binghampton, a small railroad town outside of Memphis, and in the last 10 years it has transformed from vacant storefronts to vibrancy. I picked up the cutest teal vintage apron that I wore throughout book tour, a gigantic pink sugar cookie lightly flavored with cherry, and a tub of pimento cheese to take my host in Jackson.

The bakery did not disappoint, from the retro interiors to take-and-bake chicken pot pies in the cooler, homemade vanilla bean wafers by the bag, something called cocoa crackle pie which looked much like chocolate fudge or chocolate chess pie but better, and chocolate ‘’Prozac’’ cupcakes with thick fudge icing. Bought one of those, too.

Hanging on the wall was this portrait of Muddy.

When you find a fellow baking enthusiast, you keep in touch. Kat and I have kept up via email and on social media. And just recently, when Kat posted a gorgeous photo of soda bread on Instagram, saying she was prepping for a soda bread class at the bakery, I begged for the recipe.

It was her riff on Alvin’s Savory Soda Bread, a Great British Bake Off recipe, from series six in the Mel and Sue era, she said, if you’re a GBBO fan.

Kat’s pretty obsessed with baking and GBBO. ‘’It’s embarrassing how many times I’ve watched the old episodes and that soda bread was one I wanted to try,’’ she revealed.

Step one: Mix your flour and dry ingredients in a big bowl and fold in torn prosciutto and fresh basil leaves, and lots of Manchego cubes. I used Trader Joe’s Italian blend of cheese called Quattro Fromaggi, but it got stringy and will use cheese cubes next time.

Understanding soda bread with three questions

When Ireland was more agrarian than it is now, soda bread was a snack made by farmer's wives and brought warm to the fields wrapped in a tea towel. This is something I learned in Ireland.

Two years ago Kat took a five-week sabbatical to Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry, County Cork, Ireland. ‘’I had been meaning to do this for 15 years. Meant to do it in 2020 and then Covid happened. And I never did study abroad in college, so finally I did in my 40s!

‘’There, I was making soda bread a few times a week. And also the farm at Ballymaloe gave us this incredible buttermilk and hyper-local ingredients to work with,’’ she said. ‘’That was a big aha when I got home and began working with ingredients in Memphis.’’

Once you taste a recipe in its birthplace, made with the ingredients that rightly made it famous, ‘’you learn it differently,’’ Kat said. ‘’I have an idea of the destination, where I am going with soda bread and can make tweaks and know what I’m trying to land on.’’

Step two: Turn the soda bread into an ungreased iron skillet or onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. I like the crisp bottom crust the skillet gives the bread.

Which begged a few questions:

Q. What ingredients do you need to bake a really good soda bread?

A. Whole buttermilk and use a ratio of 70 percent buttermilk to flour and in some recipes equal parts. The flour is Gold Medal, she says, either bleached or unbleached, because the protein lands right in the middle compared to other flours. The best fat is cold salted Kerrygold butter.

Q. You say the secret is a light hand?

A. Yes, don’t overwork the dough.

Q. You say to release the fairies? What does that mean?

A. Cut a deep cross into the top of the bread before baking to ‘’release the fairies.’’ It helps ensure the bread bakes through. That is what I have always heard. I knew about the fairies and didn’t know that it helps it bake through. The bread is able to release steam. It’s also explained that the cross knocks the devil out of the bread!

Kat’s soda bread has become a personal project of hers. She doesn’t sell soda bread at the bakery. But she does offer cooking classes in person should you be in the Memphis area. Here is her class schedule, and she teaches Zoom classes for private events.

Along the coast of Northern Ireland.

Given my own wee bit of Irish ancestry and my love of traveling to Ireland, I’ve highlighted March 17 on my calendar for decades. Truth be told, my mother was obsessed with all things Irish, visiting Ireland, and baking its breads when she got home.

My father, a tall and portly man, also enjoyed the Irish life and to celebrate each year, he ordered a green satin leprechaun suit with hat to wear on St. Paddy’s. What I’d give to have a photo of him in that suit!

Regardless of where I’ve lived, I’ve celebrated St. Paddy’s with soda bread, corned beef and cabbage or fish and chips, and an Irish beverage. I have been to the Savannah St. Patrick’s Day where they dyed the river green, and I hope they don’t do that anymore! Never yet to Dublin, Boston, or Chicago.

I did find the Derry Girls in Derry.

And I’ve always found it amusing that St. Paddy’s Day, being smack dab in the middle of Lent, calls for such wickedly wonderful recipes. The Irish have known not to take anything—themselves included—too seriously! Have you watched the Derry Girls?

That is the balm I need right now. I need to watch Derry Girls and read Seamus Heaney poetry and butter soda bread hot out of the oven. Poet and playwright Heaney was born in County Derry, a Catholic in Protestant Northern Ireland. He wrote poems about ordinary people who somehow did or said something extraordinary.

While writing about The Troubles, Heaney defended the right of poets to be private and apolitical observers. I wrote about my visit to Northern Ireland and Belfast. The trip showed me firsthand how a nation can become divided, how much pain Irish people have endured, and how people still carry around that pain today. One cab driver we talked to at length was concerned about America and wanted to make sure I told Americans when I got back home that they don’t want to end up like the Irish and just need to get along.

Heaney lived his later years in Dublin and won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. According to the Poetry Foundation, Seamus Heaney believed in the power of art and poetry to offer hope in times of crisis.

“If poetry and the arts do anything,” he said, “they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness." He died at 74 in 2013.

Happy Irish baking!

- xo, Anne

How do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? Fortify your inwardness now?

P.S. The Irish serve soda bread with good cheddar or butter and jam. I came across an article about Darina Allen who runs the Ballymaloe Cookery School. Darina’s mother Myrtle Allen founded it in 1983. In Ireland, if you buy buttermilk from the shop it will be thin and low in fat, Darina said. Same here in America. So her mother Myrtle often added a little sour cream or some butter from the butter wrapper to enrich a bread calling for store-bought buttermilk. I’m fortunate in Tennessee to get good buttermilk. Knoxville’s Cruze brand is excellent. So is Marburger from Evans City, Pennsylvania. In soda bread recipes, use enough buttermilk just to pull the bread together. It’s hard to come up with an exact amount in a recipe, so I leave that up to you. You don’t want a dry dough or the bread will be heavy in texture. You want to add enough buttermilk so the dough pulls together but is still a bit sticky. With a rubber spatula you can tip it out of the bowl onto the pan and pat it into shape with floured hands. Then remember to mark it with a cross to release the fairies!

One last note: I will be on CBS Saturday Morning The Dish this coming Saturday, March 15! And my 2025 book tour continues. Come see me!

THE RECIPE:

Alvin’s Savory Soda Bread

This is a robust, flavorful and savory bread packed with goodies, says Kat Gordon. Kat’s go-to comfort TV is old episodes of the Great British Bake Off during the Mel and Sue years. On Series 6, Alvin Magallanes earned high praise for his signature challenge soda bread, and he’s generously shared his recipe online. Kat’s version is mostly true to his original, but with a few small tweaks. And I have added my tweaks as well.

Makes 1 large loaf, serving 8

• 1 1⁄2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 medium red onion, sliced thinly (about 2 cups)

• 346 grams (about 2 cups plus 7/8 cup) all-purpose flour (Kat uses Gold Medal)

• 3⁄4 teaspoon baking soda (I used 1 teaspoon because it’s easier to measure)

• 1 1⁄2 teaspoons kosher salt

• A few good cranks of pepper

• 23 grams (scant 2 tablespoons) cold butter, diced

• 70 grams (about 6 slices) prosciutto, torn into pieces

• 150 grams Manchego cheese, diced (I used 2 cups shredded sharp cheese)

• A handful of fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces

• 1 cup whole buttermilk plus 2 tablespoons water

• Melted butter for brushing the loaf

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment or set aside a 10-inch cast-iron skillet.

2. Warm the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once it’s hot, add the onions and stir. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook until quite soft, about 15 minutes. Remove the lid, stir, and continue to cook- uncovered-until lightly browned, another 7 to 8 minutes. Transfer the onions to a paper towel and let cool completely.

3. Sift the flour and soda into a large bowl. Add salt and pepper and whisk to combine. Rub in the butter until it resembles small breadcrumbs.

4. Reserve a small portion of both the cheese and the prosciutto for the topping (optional, but nice!). Add the onions, prosciutto, cheese, and basil to the flour mixture. Toss well to incorporate.

5. In a Pyrex measuring cup or small bowl, mix the buttermilk with the water. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and add most of the thinned buttermilk. Mix using a lightly floured hand or a fork until it just comes together into a rough but soft, sticky dough. Add more thinned buttermilk if the dough feels dry and won’t come together. Do NOT overmix! The secret to great soda bread is a very light hand.

6. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, very lightly “scooch” into shape, and transfer to the baking sheet or skillet.

7. Flatten the loaf slightly. Dust with a little flour and use a sharp knife to cut a deep cross into the top to ‘release the fairies’ (but really to ensure that the dense center bakes through). Cover with the reserved prosciutto and cheese.

8. Bake until lightly bronzed and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the base. Internal temp should be about 200ºF, about 40 to 45 minutes. Cover the top with foil if it’s starting to brown too much.

9. Transfer to a wire rack, brush liberally with melted butter, and when it’s cool enough to slice, serve with more butter.