Like many of us, I can only assume, I am seeking slowness in the New Year.
Late last year, I reached my limit in terms of social media infinite scrolls, all-hours notifications and general digital clutter. So for 2025, my fiancé and I established a new routine: After 6pm, no phones, no laptops, no TV. It's been a transformative shift. Within just two weeks, my nerves feel less frayed and my attention more honed. In my expansive, open evenings, I find myself reading, writing and making art the way I used to. I’m also, by necessity, returning to my neglected cookbooks rather than my Pinterest folders full of recipes.
Diana Henry’s How to Eat a Peach is a dream of a book. It’s not just that the recipes are virtually fail-proof, nor that the photos are transportive. It’s also that the book, themed around Henry’s travels and life experiences, offers a beautifully sensorial meditation on food. On a cold night this week, Henry’s soda bread recipe leapt out at me. It’s the kind of dough that comes together in just 10 minutes and scents the whole house with its burnished treacle notes.
While I generally avoid cooking with beer, Henry’s recipe calls for Guinness. I swapped it with something better – HB&B and the Kernel’s Tropical Stout – which adds a bitter base note (now sold out alas, but sub in the Kernel Export Stout instead). When it came time to serve the bread, I skipped Henry’s call to top it with smoked eel and beetroot rémoulade and went simpler, with the best crème fraîche and smoked salmon I could find. I also switched to a different wintry beer: Pillars’ Icebock 2024, another labour of love that’s aged for nine months. The soda bread’s deep toffee sweetness expresses itself beautifully in the beer, while the salmon’s smoke cuts through some of its heat (at 8% ABV, it’s a certified winter warmer).
Together, the two feel like a reminder of the importance of slowness, simplicity and the senses, especially during these dark winter months.
Soda Bread with Crème Fraîche and Smoked Salmon
Adapted from Diana Henry
Serves 4-6
For the soda bread:
35g jumbo oats, plus more to garnish
150g wholemeal bread flour
100g wholemeal rye flour
85g all-purpose flour
1 ¼ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
25g salted butter
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar
85ml stout (such as The Kernel Export Stout)
40g black treacle
200ml buttermilk
To serve:
200g high-quality smoked salmon
300ml crème fraîche
Dill, to garnish
1. First, preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter a medium loaf pan and set aside.
2. Make the bread. Add the oats to a food processor and pulse until partly ground, but not yet powdered. Add to a large mixing bowl, alongside all three flours, the bicarbonate of soda and the fine sea salt. Mix to combine.
3. Cut the butter into small cubes and add to the bowl. Using your fingertips, rub it into the flour mixture until no large pieces remain. Stir through the brown sugar.
4. In a liquid measuring cup, add the stout, black treacle and buttermilk, and mix until combined. Make a well in the flours and slowly pour in the liquid ingredients. As you pour, mix with a butter knife, just until all the flour has been absorbed. You should have a shaggy dough. (Avoid over-mixing so the dough doesn’t get too wet.)
5. Transfer the dough to your prepared loaf pan and gently pat until it’s even. Sprinkle over additional jumbo oats, very gently pressing into the top of the bread so they don’t fall off after baking. #
6. Bake the bread for between 40–50 minutes. If it gets too dark on top before cooking is finished, loosely tent with foil. To test that the bread is ready, carefully remove it from its pan and tap its base; it should sound hollow. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
7. Once the bread has cooled (it’s worth waiting, as it crumbles if you cut into it while it’s still warm), use a serrated knife to cut into even slices. Top each with a generous swipe of crème fraîche and a piece of smoked salmon. Sprinkle over dill fronds and serve.
Claire M Bullen is a professional food and travel writer, a beer hound and all-around lover of tasty things. You can follow her at @clairembullen. For more recipes like this, sign up to our HB&B All Killer No Filler beer subscription - you'll receive Claire's recipe and food pairings, plus expert tasting notes, with 10 world-class beers like this one every month.
