Seven-seed soda bread

A lot of food happenings have happened in the last week or so. I'll summarize the notable ones in the next couple of posts...

In my interweb browsing, I came across a rather attractive photo of some six-grain soda bread that I just had to make... Earlier that day, I had gone to the pool and covered 21 laps, sat in the sauna for 10 minutes or so, and then decided I should head back to school to get something done... and that's when I tried to take off my pinky toe on the sauna door. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but I did cut the heck out of my toe. After Rob administered first aid, I went back to school for a while and browsed the interwebs. That's when I saw it... Check the original recipe out here.

Rob and I went to the grocery store to collect the seeds I was missing, and I hobbled off to my apartment to bake. Have I mentioned that I love my Kitchen Aid mixer? It's amazing! <3

Seven-seed Soda Bread
A recipe modified from 101cookbooks.com

The seeds:
2 1/2 tablespoons EACH of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, flax seeds and red quinoa
1 teaspoon fennel seeds

The rest:
1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups white whole wheat flour
2 teas. + a touch more baking soda
1 teas. (scant) fine grain sea salt (I used less sea salt than called for because some of the seeds I bought were salted)
1 3/4 cup buttermilk + a bit extra for brushing the bread before baking

Preheat your oven to 400F. Combine all of the seeds in a small bowl and set aside.

Measure the flours, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Stir in all but 2 tablespoons of the seeds. Put your mixer on the lowest setting and add the buttermilk. Mix until the dough just comes together. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead about 1 minute until you can form it into a ball.

Place the dough on a lightly floured baking sheet. Cut a cross into the top, cutting halfway through the loaf. Brush with buttermilk and sprinkle with the remaining seeds, making sure plenty of seeds make it down into the cracks.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, or until the bread is golden crusted on top and bottom. Cool on a wire rack.

It's truly delicious! Using both white and regular whole wheat flours resulted in a rather dense loaf - you could exchange one of the two for unbleached all-purpose flour, and I'm sure it'd be lighter. Either way, the bread was so delicious that Rob and I ate almost half of the loaf while it was still warm with butter and extra sharp cheddar cheese. Mmm! The leftovers will appear in a later post...