I felt like something savoury, what with all this carrot cake in the house. I went into Uni the other day for a critique group and bought my large soy latte with a muffin for $7 from my usual cafe. Then I had the savoury pumpkin muffin with soup the following day. Two days later, same place, same time, same coffee, same muffin – to take home to have with my soup. But then I walked past a homeless guy, wrapped in a thin blanket, a paper cup in front of him, trying to keep warm. It was the coldest day in Auckland all winter. My dilemma was short lived. I gave him the muffin. 
He looked up, took the paper bag with both hands and opened it straight away. He was hungry.
healthy sticky mixture
treacle and buttermilk
That evening I had an hour to make this craggy loaf before I was going to a language class; 35 minutes baking time. I could just about do it in time.
The interesting thing about this loaf was it doesn’t have yeast. It’s a soda bread. So it could be whipped up quickly and in fact the secret to this type of bread is to mix the dough, ‘with a light touch’! Once the ingredients were combined I had to “knead it 3 or 4 times just to shape it into a slightly craggy ball.”
It had wholemeal flour, butter, oats and the wet ingredient was buttermilk (which I made of course from limes off the tree!). This was then mixed with black treacle.
And wow, when it came out of the oven and I sliced into it, added butter and blue cheese, that oaty, black treacle flavour really shone through. 
It’s divine. When I got home, we all dived into this warm crusty sweetish loaf with tasty cheddar cheese.
Can’t wait to have it with soup for lunch 🙂
