Veda Bread (Northern Irish Loaf)

Veda is one of those local foods you can only really get in one place — Northern Ireland. It's a small, dark, dense malt loaf, slightly sweet, baked across the province since the early twentieth century. The colour and flavour come from a long, slow proof with malt extract, which gives it a deep caramel character somewhere between dark rye and a fig roll. It's traditionally toasted and buttered with cheese, but the flavour also makes it a clever ingredient: blitzed into crumbs and folded into a treacle tart it brings a savoury, malty backbone that ordinary white breadcrumbs simply can't deliver.