Plain Brown Loaf

Several months ago I discovered that the bread I had been buying as "whole wheat bread" was not what it appeared to be. After wheat flour, its next primary ingredient was soy flour!

I cannot eat soy, since it is incompatible with the thyroid medicine that I take. It explained why I had not been feeling well.

I opened the Safeway online website and began to examine labels. Too much soy. Not good.

Time to begin baking again. I have a wonderful beer-batter bread recipe, but beer has yeast, which in turn is on the list of things that may cause one to break out in hives, which has been a problem for several years. I have been trying to devise a diet that would lessen the occurrence of hives.

Soda bread seemed appropriate. St. Patrick's Day was approaching so that made it even more timely to make soda bread. I found a nice, tasty Irish Soda bread with raisins and made it several times. This most certainly was not what my ancestors made before they immigrated, though and I really wanted a whole wheat loaf.

 Finally, I found this recipe, http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/irish-brown-bread-10000000522965/"

 So yummy!  Highest recommendation to all of you who bake.  I have also made it with 1 1/4 c buttermilk substituted for the yogurt.  (And sweet milk soured with vinegar, I believe it would take one tablespoon, could be substituted for the buttermilk.)

It is becoming my house bread.  I am filled with gratitude for my plain brown loaf, my ancestors who surely made something similar and the Internet for making the recipe available.  It is a good, even wondrous time to be alive and I am glad.