Seed-crusted pumpkin, sage & Cheddar soda bread

Full-on comfort food with my delicious autumnal soda bread.

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I love pumpkin and there are so many great ways to eat it, but it makes a particularly lovely addition to a bread dough, bringing a gentle sweetness. The contrast between the sweetness of the pumpkin and the intense savoury flavour of the cheese is fabulous here.

I gently fry off the pumpkin first to develop its flavour and to soften it up a little, along with fresh sage and onions which impart lovely additional flavours. The sage is not dominant here, but it adds just enough of an earthy, pine-like flavour for little notes of interest in each bite.

I like to roll the balls of dough in seeds before baking: not just for added crunch, but also for that wonderful nutty flavour you get once seeds are roasted, which they do in the oven as the soda bread bakes. I normally use a mixture of seeds and often like to add the seeds straight from the pumpkin to my seed mix.

This soda bread is at its best eaten the day you bake it, but it is fine the next day. You can also freeze the baked soda bread: once defrosted pop in the oven at 200°C for about 5 minutes to refresh it.

Recipe: seed-crusted pumpkin, sage, onion & Cheddar soda bread

see below recipe for flavour and shaping variations

For the pumpkin and sage mixture:

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 100g pumpkin (the weight once peeled and deseeded)
• 1 medium onion
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 16 sage leaves, roughly chopped (or about a tablespoon)

For the dough:

• 400g plain flour
• 1 rounded teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• the cooled pumpkin mixture (see steps 1 and 2 of the recipe)
• about 70g mature Cheddar, either grated or cut into small chunks
• 280-300ml buttermilk (or use natural yoghurt or whole milk)

To finish:

• 3-4 tablespoons of seeds of choice: pumpkin, sesame, poppy, sunflower or a mixture.

You will also need a baking tray lined with parchment paper and the oven should be preheated to 200°C

(1) Cut the pumpkin into small cubes and then peel and finely chop the onion.

(2) Heat the oil in a medium pan and add the pumpkin, sage, onion and salt.  With the heat no higher than medium, cook for about 10-15 minutes, stirring from time to time until the pumpkin and the onions are soft, but the pumpkin still holds its shape. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

(3) For the soda bread dough, put the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl and stir well: you can sieve them if you wish but a good stir works just as well here.

(4) Add the cooled pumpkin mixture and the cheese to the bowl and stir gently just to distribute them fairly evenly. A gentle stir will also ensure the pumpkin pieces keep their shape, but if a few break down that is really not a problem.

(5) Add most of the buttermilk and, using a flat-bladed knife, gently work it in to give a soft dough: add a little more buttermilk if it is too dry and is not quite coming together. It will be a slightly sticky dough.

(6) Pour the seeds into a shallow dish.

(7) Split the dough in half and shape each piece into a rough ball: don’t be tempted to add flour as the seeds will not stick properly to the dough. Instead, wet your hands with water: as wet hands will not stick to a wet dough, this will help you shape it. They really don’t need to be perfect balls at this stage!

(8) Place a ball of dough into the seeds and rotate it to give a good coating of seeds. As the seeds start to stick to and cover the dough, you can neaten up the shaping to give a tidier ball. Place on the baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper:

(9) Using a sharp knife (ideally a serrated knife), make a deep cut into each ball of dough, cutting at least half-way through. You can make another cut to give a cross if you wish.

(10) Bake in an oven preheated to 200°C for about 25 minutes or until well risen and the base sounds hollow when you tap it. Leave to cool on a rack and then tuck in!

Flavour variations

There are many tweaks you can make to this dish:

• use butternut squash or marrow in place of pumpkin.
• use a different cheese: a crumbly blue cheese is also superb here, as is a smoked cheese.
• add pine nuts or roughly chopped walnuts: I’d go for 2-3 tablespoons or so.

Shaping variations

You can shape these into individual soda bread rolls or mini loaves: simply take about a tablespoon of the mixture at a time and roll these gently in the seeds.

Once seeded, you can then shape them easily either into a ball or into logs to bake just as they are on the baking tray. Alternatively, pop them into mini muffin tins or mini loaf tins, but place a strip of parchment in them first so the soda breads do not stick.

For smaller ones you can either snip into the tops with scissors or leave them as they are. These smaller soda breads bake for about 15-20 minutes.