Irish Soda Bread by Barefoot Contessa

I'd like to see Ina Garten scrape a piece of dough she describes as "it will be very wet" out of a bowl and onto a cutting board gracefully, quickly, or without standing next to the counter rubbing her hands together like a moron trying to scrape the dough out from between her fingers, because that is exactly what I do every time I make bread.  I love kneading dough, to be sure, I just wish I didn't feel stupid every time I did it.

Time-wasting, mind-numbing dumbness aside, this is a great recipe that I will definitely be making again.  There's one tablespoon of sugar for every cup of flour, but the finished product is sweetened to a heavenly state by fresh orange zest and dried currants.  POW, it's obviously sweet, but the natural, fruity ingredients keep it from tasting sugary.  Heck, you probably don't even need to add as much sugar as was called for in order to get it to taste sweet and delicious.

You're supposed to cut an X into the top of the bread so that heat will get into the middle of the bread and cook it evenly.  I regret not flouring my knife, because my X was a little less pronounced than I should like it to be.  A thin layer underneath the top crust of the loaf took some time longer than the rest of the bread to cook, and it did not look as pretty when it came out, either.

Looks more like an Xbox logo than a loaf of bread.  

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Nevertheless, it still tastes delightful and I eagerly look forward to scarfing down on it with every meal for as long as it lasts!