Cestari Releases Recipe for Irish Soda Bread Using Its Silicone Bread Baker

Kitchen and home products maker, Cestari, has released a recipe Irish soda bread using its cloche-style silicone bread baker.

The Easy Pod by Cestari can be used for any recipe that requires steaming. With just a minimal setup, the Easy Pod offers a convenient way for steaming and roasting everything from vegetables to meat in the microwave or oven. Cestari recommends the Easy Pod for a variety of uses such as a microwave vegetable steamer, an omelet maker, a fish poacher, an oven roaster, and, when it comes to preparing Irish soda bread, as a cloche.

The ingredients in Cestari’s recipe for Irish soda bread include 4 to 4½ cups of all-purpose flour, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 4 tablespoons butter, 1 cup of currants or raisins, 1 large lightly beaten egg, and 1¾ cups of buttermilk. The flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda must be mixed thoroughly before adding butter until the dough resembles a coarse meal. Next, the recipe calls for adding raisins and then stirring in the egg and buttermilk.

In preparation for the Irish soda bread recipe, the oven must be preheated to 425°F and the Easy Pod should be coated with a non-stick spray. The dough must then be kneaded into a ball with a light coating of flour on top if needed. Scoring an “X” into the top of the dough gives the air a channel to escape and controls its expansion. The recipe recommends baking for 35 to 40 minutes until the dough is golden and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

After the Easy Pod is pulled from the oven, the bread can cool inside for around 5 to 10 minutes before being ready to serve. To accompany the Easy Pod, Cestari also recommends several other products from its kitchen lineup including the Cestari Pastry Blender for cutting in the butter, the Cestari Bench Knife for scoring the dough, and the Cestari Serrated Bread Knife for cutting up and serving the Irish soda bread.

The spokesperson for Cestari shares the company’s motivation behind making the recipe available for Amazon buyers. They say, “The Easy Pod is just so versatile. There is no limit to how you can incorporate it into your everyday cooking. We want our customers to be creative and use it for all the possibilities that its shape and food-grade silicone material offer. We are sure our Irish soda bread recipe has prompted some of our buyers to imagine the hundreds of scrumptious recipes that they can make using it. Please feel free to experiment and make something that is truly your own creation.”

The Cestari Easy Pod is made from BPA-free silicone and is LFGB food safe certified, a European standard for food safety that is far more stringent than the FDA equivalent. With a 14-ounce capacity, it can steam most vegetables in under 3 minutes in the microwave, make an omelet in 2 minutes, and can even be used to roast or poach fish or chicken. The Easy Pod is collapsible and rolls up easily for storage in even the smallest kitchens.

Reviewers have shared their enthusiastic approval for the Easy Pod on its Amazon listing where it has an impressive overall rating of 4.3 out of 5.0 from over 200. Over 80% of the ratings are 4 stars and nearly 70% of all ratings are 5 stars. Reviewers highly recommend the Easy Pod for preserving the flavor of the food cooked within and the fact that it is very easy to clean.

One 5-star review says, “I have purchased 3 - one for home, one for our winter home, and one for a gift! It cleans up so easily, can be stored in little space, is non-stick, and fits a quick meal lifestyle. One of the best kitchen tools I have ever found.”

Readers looking for the best silicone bread baker are urged to check out the Easy Pod by Cestari on Amazon.