Welsh Speckled Bread - Bread Baking Day #10 - Breakfast Breads

Melissa of Baking a Sweet Life is hosting this month's Bread Baking Day, and she has chosen a theme of breakfast breads. She has asked us to share your family's/country's traditional breakfast bread.

Yesterday, as I was flicking through The Age Good Weekend magazine, I saw a recipe for Welsh Speckled Bread which sounded like a perfect recipe for this event. Even though the origin of this recipe is Welsh, not Australian, because Australia is a country of many different immigrant populations, I think this bread qualifies as being traditional for at least some Aussies. It relies on self-raising flour as the rising agent instead of yeast, and forms a dense, heavy loaf. The recipe, by Matthew Evans, is as follows:

500g mixed dried fruit
100g sugar
300ml hot tea
500g self raising flour, sifted
2 tablespoons marmalade
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 beaten egg
warmed honey to glaze

Put the dried fruit and sugar in a bowl, and pour over the hot tea. Leave the mixture to sit overnight so that the fruit absorbs most of the tea.

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Grease and line a two litre loaf tin (or in my case, a slightly smaller loaf tin and three mini loaf pans).

Place the fruit in a large bowl, and stir in the sifted flour and spice, then add the beaten egg and combine well. Push the dough into the prepared loaf tin/s, and bake in the preheated oven for 60-75minutes or until the bread is cooked when tested with a skewer. Remove hte read from the oven and immediately brush the top of the bread with the warmed honey to give the top a lovely, glossy appearance.

Cool the bread in the tin for around 5 minutes, then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely. To serve, spread generous slices with butter or margarine. Yum!!!