Inspired by this Endless Simmer post on "authentic" Irish soda bread and with memories of my grandmother's version in my head, I baked up a loaf for St. Patrick's Day. I took a middle route, a hybrid approach somewhere between the authentic version and the version I ate as a kid.
I basically followed the directions from Endless Simmer, with a few modifications:
1) I used about 1.5 cups of cake flour, with the addition of approximately 1 cup of all-purpose unbleached flour because I a) ran out of cake flour and b) found the dough to be super sticky, wet and unmanageable without additional flour
2) I threw the loaf directly onto a pre-heated baking stone rather than use the cast iron pot
3) Finally, in deference to my grandmother's recipe (which I'm sure was only remotely related to the recipe above- yogurt not being a resident in her fridge), I threw in about third of a cup of raisins.
It came out pretty delicious! More moist than I remember, but still with that crusty, craggy top. Mmmm. And, yes, I drank some stout whilst mixing up the ingredients for this tasty treat.