How to make the perfect bara brith

Bara brith, whose name means "speckled bread", sits alongside Yorkshire brack, Irish barmbrack and other tea loaves and is traditionally eaten with strong tea and cold salty butter. Laura Mason and Catherine Brown record the older name teisen dorth from south Wales and date the recipe no earlier than the start of the 20th century, though digitised records reveal a reference to it being eaten before school examinations in Bala, Gwynedd, in 1857.

There is reason to think it began as a way of using excess bread dough, but it needs no such excuse. Recipes fall into two camps: yeasted loaves, which give a lighter, chewier crumb suited to topping with butter, and versions made with chemical leaveners that produce a squidgier, cake-like texture.

The earliest baking-powder recipe in the record comes from Miss AM Davies in 1946, and Roger Pizey praises the yeast-free approach for reliably moist results; Regula Ysewijn, Bryn Williams and Bobby Freeman, among others, maintain yeasted methods for a more bread-like chew.

Wales, Bala, Gwynedd

bara brith, speckled bread, tea loaf, yorkshire brack, barmbrack, teisen dorth, yeasted loaves, chemical leaveners, baking powder, regula ysewijn