The deceptively named lava bread is a Welsh delicacy. (Or it is in the south at least, I
cannot speak for those strange people in the north.) It has nothing to do with volcanoes nor
does it meet the commonly accepted definition of bread.
Its basic ingredient is in fact a kind of seaweed, the variety known as Palmaria
palmata, or dulse, which is collected from the seashore, boiled into a mush, rolled in
oatmeal and then fried. It is normally served as an accompaniment to the traditional
British breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausages etc, in the same way as black pudding is
served in the North of England.
It crops up all over South Wales but is particularly big in Swansea.
To be perfectly honest, lava bread is a vile, disgusting concoction that tastes of nothing
more than salt and sand and ought really to be banned under the UN chemical Weapons
convention. I have no idea why people persist in eating the stuff and why restaurants in
Wales will present otherwise edible food with 'leek and lava bread sauce'. Perhaps the
tourists like it.