Foraging - lavender and garlic soda bread

Is it 'foraging' when actually you’re walking round the neighbourhood with a pair of scissors and snipping lavender heads from neighbouring front gardens?

Let’s say yes. 

This is Ian’s made-up recipe for garlic and lavender soda bread. 

At some point it started life as a 'real' soda bread recipe, but over time it's been fiddled with and fussy ingredients such as buttermilk have been jettisoned in favour of simplicity and speed.  We've played with lots of additions, but lavender and garlic is the current winner (try also, cumin seeds, toasted sunflower seeds or crumbled goat's cheese)

All amounts are approximate, what you are aiming for is the consistency.  You will need a cast-iron griddle pan and this takes around 5 mins to prepare and 15-20 mins to cook.

Makes a dinner plate-sized flatbread, around 2cm thick, serves 2 hungry hippo's or 4 nibblers.

Approximately 200g flour,
A flat teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
Approximately 200mls milk and 1/2 a lemon's worth of lemon juice (this is important as it acidifies the milk which makes it substitutable for buttermilk - vinegar also works, but use less), or 200ml buttermilk
About 10 heads of lavender with the flowers scraped from the stalk (pick highly scented ones with open flowers).
Three gloves of garlic, finely chopped (this is medium-garlicky, add more, add less, or roast for a totally different taste!).

First mix together the flour with the milk and lemon.  You want to add enough milk/lemon to make a good sticky dough - this will be way stickier than you would expect from a 'proper' leavened bread recipe. 

Add the garlic and lavender.  Once the ingredients are mixed, STOP.  Don't overwork it or it will become stodgy.

Generously pat the mixture with flour so you can handle it and press/roll it out to a thickness of around 1.5 cm. 

Drop in heavy-bottomed griddle pan which has been pre-heated on a medium flame.  Turn after 5-10 mins, depending on thickness.

 

I should point out that no lavender plants were decimated in the making of this bread; we took the 10 or so heads from 5 or 6 plants.  However, if you’ve seen a couple walking around Cambridge making an exaggerated show of sniffing the lavender in your front garden.  Apologies, we stole a bit. 

But it was amazing.