Irish soda bread: tigernut, currants, and no yeast at all

Traditional Irish soda bread never needed yeast, just baking soda reacting against soured milk. This version keeps that same simple logic and rebuilds the soured milk from coconut milk and apple cider vinegar.

Tigernut flour is the ingredient doing the real work here. It is not a nut at all but a small dried tuber, and it bakes with a warm, slightly sweet flavor that grain flours cannot quite reach. There is no tested substitute for it in this particular loaf, so it is worth sourcing rather than swapping.

This eats closer to a dense tea bread or scone than a sandwich loaf, best with a little honey or a hot cup of tea alongside it.

AIP note: written with a gelatin egg. If eggs are already reintroduced for you, one whole egg works in its place.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup full-fat coconut milk
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup tigernut flour
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1/4 cup arrowroot starch
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/3 cup palm shortening (coconut oil works)
• 2 tsp honey
• 3 tbsp currants or raisins

Gelatin egg: 1 tbsp gelatin bloomed in 1/4 cup water, warmed until liquid, then whisked vigorously until frothy and used right away

Method

Heat the oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with lightly greased parchment.

Stir the apple cider vinegar into the coconut milk and set aside to sour slightly.

Combine the tigernut flour, coconut flour, arrowroot, and baking soda in a large bowl. Cut in the palm shortening until evenly distributed.

Mix in the honey and the soured coconut milk until a dough starts to form, then mix in the frothy gelatin egg. Fold in the currants.

Shape the dough into a round loaf on the baking sheet and score a deep cross into the top with a knife, the traditional mark that lets the loaf expand evenly as it bakes.

Bake 23 to 25 minutes, until lightly golden. Cool completely on a rack, at least 20 minutes, before slicing; the gelatin needs the cooling time to fully set, and cutting it warm will cause it to fall apart.

Storage

Refrigerator: several days, well wrapped.

*Adapted from unboundwellness.com by Michelle Hoover*