Irish Wheaten Bread

It's very much soup season and when I'm short of bread (which is most of the time since Mr P retired) I make a soda bread to go with it.

I first met soda bread 24 years ago, the first time I went to Ireland, and I fell in love with it. I have tried ever since to replicate the bread that I had then but have never quite got it. I even went back to the same b&b a few years ago and got the recipe from the owner but I don't think it was for the bread that I had there originally. Anyway, I belong to a sewing forum and a lovely lady from Northern Ireland gave me her recipe for wheaten bread (she says that it's only soda bread when it's white). It's the very thing I have been searching for for so many years and is now in my pink spotty book.
It's so easy to make and is good, still warm, with soup.

8oz wholemeal flour (you don't need strong flour)
4oz plain white flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
1 handful of sugar ( I don't know how much a handful is but I find a teaspoon quite sufficient)
1/2 pint of buttermilk (or half and half plain yoghurt and water)
1 egg
1 tablespoon of oil

Sift the dry ingredients together. Add the liquid and mix well.
put in a well greased 2 lb loaf tin. It will just fit into a 1 lb deep loaf tin.

Cook in a hot oven (200c) for 15 mins. (I go a bit lower in my fan oven)
Turn down to 150c and cook for a further 25 minutes

That sounds delicious. It also sounds like just the thing to cook over Christmas when the bread stocks get low!

I bought soda bread from the supermarket recently to try it. I thought it was nice enough but Mr Bear went 'ptherrr' and said 'Horrible'.
Will try your recipe, Ploshkin, and not tell him what it is. It's bound to be nicer than the SMs offering.

Just realised it wasn't soda bread that made Mr Bear go 'ptherrr', it was sourdough bread.
Just need some plain yogurt and I'll be ready to dough!

I make sourdough bread.  Supermarket loaves are likely to be made with yeast with a bit of dried sourdough culture thrown in.
There's no real mystery to sourdough, it's simply bread made using wild yeast (from a pre prepared starter) and it needs long proving and rising times as the yeasts are not as active as commercial yeast.  People aim for big holes in sourdough but I find them a pain because stuff drips through.