Comfort Food: Spiced Date and Orange Soda Bread

In her second instalment of festive recipes, foodie Florence Blair shares her simple steps for making this spiced Date and Orange Soda Bread. Add heaps of butter and a sprinkle of salt for a warming breakfast or afternoon snack. 

Ingredients 

Makes 1 large loaf

• 8 medjool dates, pitted (approximately 150g once pitted)
• 80g hazelnuts, walnuts or almonds
• 1 heaped tbsp coriander seeds
• 400g white spelt or plain flour
• 50g oats
• 2 heaped tsp ground allspice
• 1 tsp salt 
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 450g natural yoghurt 
• Zest of 2 oranges

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C fan and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

2. Roughly chop the dates and hazelnuts, keeping both chunky so that you get more texture and visible pieces in the finished loaf. Lightly crush the coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar (if you don’t have a pestle and mortar, use the end of a rolling pin and a very sturdy bowl).

3. In a large bowl, mix the flour, oats, allspice, salt and bicarb so that everything is evenly distributed. Mix in the dates and hazelnuts (I find using your hands is best here to separate out the sticky date pieces). In another bowl, mix the yoghurt and orange zest. Add this to the flour mixture, saving the last slicks of yoghurt in the bowl for brushing on the loaf once shaped.

4. Working as swiftly as possible, roughly shape the dough into a round loaf and transfer to the lined baking tray. Use a sharp knife to score a cross on the top of the loaf and brush over the last bits of yoghurt. Scatter over the crushed coriander seeds then bake in the oven for 40 minutes until deeply golden and hollow-sounding when tapped on the base.

5. Serve the soda bread warm from the oven with lots of butter and flaky salt.

Florence Blair is recipe writer and food stylist. Sign up to her newsletter here.