What you’ll need

Lightly floured baking tray.

Ingredients

• 12 oz plain flour
• 3 oz raisins
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (too much turns bread yellow)
• ½ tsp cream of tartar (keeps the bread white – is optional)
• Pinch of salt
• Approximately ¼ – ¾ pint buttermilk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 220C or 200C Fan.
2. Sieve the flour, baking soda and cream or tartar into a large bowl.
3. Add the raisins, salt and sugar and aerate well with hands.
4. Make a well in the centre and add half of the buttermilk at first, bring together with your hand and keep adding enough buttermilk to make a soft dough (almost wet).
5. Turn out onto a well floured surface.
6. Bring it together very lightly into a ball and place on a flour-dusted baking tray, make a cross with a sharp knife. And then a little dent in each corner to let the fairies out!
7. Bake for approximately 25mins . In a conventional oven at 220C for 10 minutes then reduce temp to 200C.
8. You can turn the loaf upside down for the last 5 minutes.
9. The top should be golden and the base should sound hollow when tapped.
10. Cool on a rack (wrapped in a clean tea towel if you prefer not to have a hard crust)

Notes

Cream of tartar is an acid and reacts with bicarbonate of soda to raise a mixture. Bicarbonate of soda is an alkali and reacts with an acid (buttermilk or lemon juice) to raise a mixture. Baking powder is a combination of cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda and some other base flour (rice or corn flour) which reacts with moisture (milk or eggs) to raise a mixture. When making a cake it is essential to put it immediately into a hot oven.