Dulse Soda Bread, Because You Cannot Proof a Dough on a Beach

Toasted dulse crumbled into a soda bread that goes from bowl to oven in eight minutes and travels warm in linen — plus the buckwheat version, baked in the same tins the same morning.

September 3, 2026 By Rachel Anderson

Kitchen Kit

Pairing
Wine — A light red served properly cold — a Fleurie or a young Trousseau, straight out of an ice bucket. No oak and no tannin, but enough acidity to handle treacle and salted butter, and cold red outdoors is one of the most underrated things you can pour. Mixed drink — A highball built on a lightly peated malt with a great deal of very cold soda and a wide strip of lemon peel. The smoke lines up with the toasted dulse rather than fighting it, and the length and the bubbles clear the butter off your palate between pieces, which a short drink will not do. Teetotaler — Cold buttermilk whisked smooth with lemon juice, a good pinch of salt, cracked black pepper and a lot of chopped dill, poured into small glasses. It is the loaf's own acid served back beside it, savory and faintly sour rather than sweet, and it is the only thing on the table that makes bread and butter taste like a course rather than a filler.

Tools
A digital scale, because flour measured by volume varies by as much as 20 percent and this dough has no proofing stage in which to forgive you, a bowl considerably bigger than you think (four loaves is the maximum one bowl should ever hold), one bare hand used as a claw and absolutely no mixer, a dry heavy pan for toasting the dulse, four flat trays for the free-form loaves and four 8 inch cake pans for the buckwheat ones, a sharp knife for cutting the cross deep, a cooling rack, a probe thermometer if you want the 205°F number rather than the hollow-thud test, labeled bags for the night-before dry mix, and linen cloths plus a crate that closes for the carry

Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Dried dulse (nori or dried sea lettuce toasts the same way but is milder and greener and gives you far less of the bacon note, so put 2 teaspoons white miso into the buttermilk to replace the depth — it is a decent loaf and not quite this one), all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, medium oatmeal, baking soda, fine sea salt weighed rather than measured (flaky salt at the same volume is about half the salt and the loaf tastes underseasoned), black treacle or a dark honey, buttermilk (whole milk soured with lemon juice or white vinegar is close enough that nobody comments, plain kefir is better than either, and unsweetened oat milk soured the same way with olive oil in place of the butter makes a completely respectable dairy-free loaf), butter, and for the buckwheat version buckwheat flour, a gluten-free white blend, fine polenta and psyllium husk, which is structural rather than optional

Magic
Chill the bowl and the weighed dry mix in the fridge overnight alongside the buttermilk, and mix with everything properly cold. The lift in a soda bread is a single finite acid-base reaction that starts the instant the liquid lands, and cold slows it down — so more of the gas is still in the dough when it hits a 425°F oven instead of having fizzed away on the bench while you shaped four loaves in a row. You get a taller, more open crumb, a cross that opens into four clean quarters rather than slumping, and noticeably less of the soapy metallic edge that unspent baking soda leaves behind. It is the rare trick that costs nothing and changes the loaf. Not willing to give up the fridge shelf? Have the buttermilk fridge-cold and get all four loaves into the oven inside ninety seconds of the pour — most of the gain is in the speed rather than the temperature.

Before you begin
Mix for thirty seconds and stop. The dough should be shaggy and sticky with dry patches still showing, and if it looks smooth you have already spent the rise. Whisk the dry ingredients for a full minute first — unmixed baking soda leaves soapy pockets that people absolutely notice. Never mix more than four loaves in one bowl, because by the time you have brought eight together the first four are flat, and never mix wet into dry ahead of time: a batter left standing twenty minutes bakes heavy and faintly metallic. The dulse goes from perfect to bitter in about thirty seconds — pull it the moment it darkens and smells sweet and marine, not a beat later. Baking soda is the one thing that does not scale straight, so at double quantity use 1.8 times the soda. Cool the loaves at least half an hour before wrapping or the trapped steam turns the crust to leather, and give the buckwheat loaves a full hour before cutting or the center comes out gummy.

Every outdoor dinner reaches the same fork in the road about bread, and most of them take the wrong one. A sourdough is better bread. It is also a twenty-hour commitment tied to an oven you have and a schedule you do not control, and on the day of a beach dinner your morning belongs to salt crusts, ice and the wine going into a trench. Soda bread is mixed and in the oven in eight minutes, comes out in forty, wraps in linen and is still warm two hours later. That is not a compromise. That is the correct bread for this problem.

The dulse is what makes it belong to this evening. Toasted and crumbled into the flour it gives a dark speckle through the crumb and a savory, faintly bacon-like depth that has no business coming from a seaweed. It is also the only ingredient on the whole table that came out of the water the guests are currently sitting in front of.

The thing that decides whether this works is how little you handle it. Soda bread is leavened by an acid-base reaction that begins the moment the buttermilk hits the baking soda, and it is finite. Every extra thirty seconds of mixing is gas you have already spent and gluten you did not want. Bring it together, shape it badly, get it in the oven.

Yield and timing

Yield: 4 round loaves, each cutting into 12 wedges — 48 pieces, written for a table of 40 with a little over, because bread is the thing people take a second piece of.

Time: 15 minutes active, 55 minutes total. Make-ahead: none worth having. This is baked on the morning of and that is the whole point of choosing it.

Ingredients — the dulse loaf

1 oz dried dulse
2 lb all-purpose flour (about 7 cups, but weigh it — flour by volume varies by up to 20% depending on how it went into the cup)
10 oz whole wheat flour
3½ oz medium oatmeal
⅝ oz baking soda (about 3½ teaspoons)
½ oz fine sea salt (about 2¼ teaspoons) — fine sea salt, weighed; the same volume of flaky salt is roughly half as much and the loaf will taste under-seasoned
1½ oz black treacle or dark honey (about 2 tablespoons)
4¾ cups buttermilk, cold, plus up to ⅔ cup more
4 tablespoons melted butter, cooled

The buckwheat version — same tins, same morning

1 oz dried dulse
1 lb 2 oz buckwheat flour
10 oz gluten-free white flour blend
5 oz fine polenta or gluten-free oatmeal
⅜ oz psyllium husk — the structural ingredient; without it this is a scone that has fallen over
½ oz baking soda, ⅜ oz fine sea salt, 1½ oz treacle
1 quart buttermilk, plus more as needed — this batter is wetter and should look wrong
4 tablespoons melted butter

Method

Toast the dulse. Dry pan, medium heat, 60–90 seconds, turning constantly. It is ready when it darkens, goes brittle and smells like the tide coming in on a warm day — sweet, marine, slightly smoky. Thirty seconds later it smells burnt and bitter and you start again. Crumble it in your fingers; you want flakes, not powder.
Heat the oven to 400°F convection / 425°F conventional and flour four trays or four 8-inch cake pans. Do this before you touch the buttermilk.
Whisk the dry ingredients together thoroughly — flours, oatmeal, baking soda, salt, dulse. Thoroughly means a full minute; unmixed baking soda leaves soapy pockets that people notice.
Stir the treacle and melted butter into the buttermilk so it goes in evenly rather than as a lump you have to chase.
Pour the wet into the dry and mix with one hand, spread like a claw, for 30 seconds. No more. It should be a shaggy, sticky, slightly under-mixed dough with dry patches still visible. If it looks smooth you have gone too far. Add the extra buttermilk if it will not come together at all.
Divide into four, shape into rough rounds — twenty seconds each, no kneading — and cut a deep cross most of the way through each one. The cross is not decoration; it lets the heat into the middle of a dense wet loaf.
Bake 35–40 minutes. Done when the crust is dark, the cross has opened into four distinct quarters, and the base sounds hollow — a dull thud means five more minutes. Internal temperature around 205°F if you want a number.
Cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes before wrapping. Wrapping hot bread traps steam and softens the crust to leather.

The buckwheat loaves go into tins rather than free-form, take 45–50 minutes, and must be left an hour before cutting — gluten-free crumb sets as it cools and cutting hot gives you a gummy center.

Make-ahead

A week out: toast and crumble the dulse; store airtight.

The night before: weigh and whisk all the dry ingredients into labelled bags. This turns the morning’s job into pouring buttermilk into a bag’s worth of flour, and it is the single most useful ten minutes you will spend the day before.

The morning of: bake, cool, wrap in linen. What must not be done: mixing the wet and dry ahead. The reaction starts on contact and a batter left standing twenty minutes bakes into a heavy, flat, faintly metallic loaf.

Holding and service

Wrapped in a double layer of linen and packed into a closed crate, the loaves stay pleasantly warm for about two hours and good for eight. Soda bread’s honest window is the day it is baked; on day two it is toast, and it is very good toast, but it is not this.

On the table it goes out whole on a board with the cross visible and is torn rather than sliced, with butter left out of the fridge for two hours so it spreads. Cold butter on a cold beach is a small daily cruelty and it takes no effort to avoid. The board is put down at 19:40 with the first course and stays through the plain course at 20:10, which is deliberate: people should be doing something ordinary with their hands at the moment the lanterns move in and the room gets twelve feet smaller.

Scaling

Everything multiplies straight except the baking soda, which does not — at double quantity use 1.8 times the soda, because excess baking soda that has nothing left to react with tastes soapy and metallic and there is no hiding it. Mixing does not scale either: never mix more than four loaves’ worth in one bowl, because by the time you have brought eight loaves together the first four have spent their lift. Above about eight loaves the method changes to relay batches, one bowl at a time, straight into a preheated oven.

Substitutions

No buttermilk: whole milk soured with lemon juice or white vinegar at 1 tablespoon per cup, left ten minutes. It works; the crumb is very slightly less tender because you have less of the thickness that buttermilk brings, and it is close enough that nobody will comment. Plain kefir is better than either.

No dulse: ¾ oz nori or dried sea lettuce, toasted the same way. Nori is milder and greener and gives less of the bacon note; add 2 teaspoons of white miso to the buttermilk to put the savory depth back. Not identical, and honestly not quite as good.

Dairy-free: unsweetened oat milk soured as above, and olive oil for the butter. The crust is a little paler and the crumb slightly closer, and it is a completely respectable loaf.

The theme

This bread was written for The Tide Comes In at Nine, a Tangled Thistle occasion staged on tidal ground and timed to a published tide table. It is the plain course, on purpose, and the reasoning behind having a plain course at all is in Six Courses Against a Published Number. The buckwheat loaves are not an accommodation — they come out of the same oven on the same morning and go onto the same board, which is the only version of this that is worth doing.

Part of Recipes & Technique.