Bara brith, the traditional Welsh fruit loaf whose name means speckled bread, is, as Ben Mervis notes, not dissimilar to Yorkshire brack, Irish barmbrack and Scottish “kerrie loaf” – the last is a new one on me, though, of course, I’m more than familiar with how well they all pair with strong tea and cold salty butter. According to food writers Laura Mason and Catherine Brown, they were originally known as teisen dorth in south Wales, and they date the recipe to no earlier than the beginning of the 20th century. However, the digitising of records since their book Food of Britain was published in 1999 allowed me to find a reference to it being eaten before school examinations in Bala, Gwynedd, in Seren Cymru from 1857. (Pen Vogler notes that “anything made with flour, however, is likely to be relatively modern, as wheat was too unreliable to be a staple in wet, upland Wales.”) There’s no reason to doubt the pair’s claim that bara brith was originally made from excess bread dough, but I think it’s good enough to need no such excuse.
