Bara brith

Bara brith

Bara brith, a traditional Welsh bread
Alternative names	Speckled bread
Type	Sweet bread
Place of origin	Wales
Main ingredients	Yeast, mixed fruit (such as raisins, currants and candied peel)
Variations	Without yeast, using self raising flour instead

Bara brith, sometimes known as "speckled bread" (the literal meaning of the original Welsh-language name), can be either a yeast bread enriched with dried fruit or made with self-raising flour (no yeast). It is traditionally flavoured with tea, dried fruits and mixed spices, and is served sliced and buttered at tea time. A decrease in popularity of it led to supermarket Morrisons removing it from their shelves in 2006, and a year later a survey showed that 85% of teenagers in the UK had never tried it. It has been subsequently championed by celebrity chefs such as Bryn Williams, and is known to be favoured by Charles, Prince of Wales. Several variations on bara brith have been made, including changing it into a chocolate and into ice-cream.

Bara brith derived its name from the Welsh language, "bara" meaning bread and "brith" translating as speckled. It is claimed to have been invented by a Welsh chef who added dried fruit and spices to a bread dough, creating the first version of the traditional Welsh tea loaf. It has subsequently been used as a coloqiualism - to "over spice the bara brith" means to do something to excess.

In 2006, British supermarket chain Morrisons withdrew bara brith from sale at 19 of its Welsh based stores. Complaints were issued in the press, but the company insisted that the bread was removed because of lack of sales. A survey conducted by British supermarket chain Sainsbury's in 2006 showed that 36% of teenagers in Wales surveyed had never tried bara brith. When responses across the UK were viewed, some 85% of teenagers had never tried the traditional Welsh bread.

Celebrity chef Phil Vickery cooked bara brith in Brynsiencyn, Anglesey, in 2011 for a segment on the ITV television series This Morning. He used a traditional recipe which had been handed down to local chef Nerys Roberts through her family. Her bakery had previously supplied British supermarket chain Safeway with bara brith, before it was bought out by Morrisons. Beca Lyne-Pirkis baked a bara brith for one her entries during the fourth season of the BBC television series The Great British Bake Off in 2013. Although she based it off her grandmother's recipe, she found it difficult to complete within the three hours allocated for that round. But, it won praise from judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry.