Yeast-free soda bread

This is a delicious and SERIOUSLY simple yeast-free soda bread recipe. It comes from Erica White's Beat Candida Cookbook (which you can buy here) and literally takes 5 minutes to prepare, especially once you've had a couple of goes...

I've found that the most important thing is to not touch the dough with your hands until you've mixed it (I use quite a solid, silicone spatula to do this) and sprinkled flour on it as it's very sticky and otherwise ends up stuck all over your fingers... not ideal!

Also really helps to flour the surface you're going to put it on and roll it about in it a bit as then it's not sticky at all.

The loaf in these pictures is a slight variation on the basic recipe as I swapped out some of the wholemeal flour for oatmeal and stuck some sunflower seeds on the top... Should have pushed them in a bit further though as they keep falling off every time I touch it, but hey - now I know for next time!

I don't always bother sifting the flour, I add a bit of salt and I also use only half the recipe as this size loaf is perfect for one - I knock a few mins off the cooking time when I do this but will post as Erica writes it as then people can play around with it as they choose.

I promise that this is probably the easiest bread I've ever made. I used to make a really good gluten-free soda bread so will dig out the recipe for that and post it too as an alternative. I'm sure this would work with soya yoghurt rather than cow's milk if you can't do dairy... or it might work with sheep or goat, although I think the flavour would come through in the bread quite a lot so would depend if you liked that or not!

YEAST-FREE SODA BREAD RECIPE (from Erica White's Beat Candida Cookbook)


450g wholewheat plain flour
2 tsp potassium (or sodium) bicarbonate
300ml natural yoghurt
150ml warm water

Preheat oven to 200ºC. Sift flour and mix in raising agent. Then stir in yoghurt and warm water.
Mix together well then coat the mixture with more flour and liberally flour your working surface - no kneading is necessary. Make into fairly flat, oval shape (or two smaller ones) and cut a cross on the top.
Place on a floured tray and bake for 30 minutes, then turn oven down to 180ºC and leave for another 20 minutes. To test if it's ready, tap the bottom of the loaf and it should sound hollow. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

When it's cool, I always try a slice (obviously...!) I then wrap the loaf in greaseproof paper and put in the breadbin. It seems to last pretty well...

NOM!