[Sca-cooks] More Russian black bread....

[Phlip]

Bear had written:

> One of the chief adulterants for black bread is sawdust. I wonder if he
was
> used to the texture of extra cellulose in his bread.

so I asked Alexey, our Volga Boatman, for his input, and this is what he had
to post to us about Russian bread.

(BTW, Maggie, we'll have a translation for you in a couple of days. Paul
Buell scanned it and said it looks pretty pedestrian, so now he's talked
himself into finding us some more, more interesting recipes for black bread,
and I'll share them when they arrive.)

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Alexey skrev:

Greetings!

Sawdust is a substitute for flour, but in years of hunger only. There
were not-proved references that the Nazi administration in occupied areas of
Russia
had a recipe of ersatz bread with sawdust bu I'm not sure. All in all,
Russia lies in the so-called insecure (unstable??? not sure about
the translation of the agricultural-climatological term) agriculture,
and even Kievan Russia lies at latitides of Canadian sites, not
to say in Canada they have warmer climate due to Gulf stream. So, it
was too common that the crops were poor, and they had to replace wheat
flour (and then rhye flour as well) with goose-foot or nettle (even
now sometimes used in salads) or even chaff. There is plenty of evidence of
XX
century substitutes, tied to two dates in USSR - 1933-35, when by
force the peasants were stripped of their food sources, to make them
join collective farms (great hunger in Ukraine & on the Volga), also
1935-1939, as there were plenty of prisons and penal servitude, and nobody
actually cared about the prisoners' health, feeding them with cheap
substitutes
instead of bread, and WWII, when most part of wheat-and rhye-growing
areas were occupied by the Germans. Later there was also a period when
there was almost no bread (about 1960-62 they stupidly ploughed up
the virgin soil in Northern Kazakhstan, but couldn't dispose of the
great crops, then the winds tore off all the soil,
so they had neither wheat nor soil), but afair they used peanut flour
not sawdust then.

In the post-war USSR sawdust wasn't used to be added to dough. It had a more
profitable use, :-) they made cheap alcohol out of it (so
called "technical" alcohol, contrary to "drinkable" alcohol made of wheat &
potatoes) which was economical, especially when in early 1980s they
issued an extremely cheap brand of "wooden" vodka and got a great
profit for the state (from 1920s until 1990s vodka was the state
monopoly in Russia).

As for "Russian rye" that's like cake, I don't think it's a compliment
only. Look.

1. traditional rhye bread is a yeast-based food that plays the same
role that wine does in warmer climate, or beer as well - in the
majority of Europe. It provides the body with the fermentation
products.

2. But it must be sour for this purpose, and indeed it's hard for a
freshman to get used to it (no Frenchmen actually do, afaik),
preferring white bread, which is sweeter. Though, white bread can be a
reason to get avitaminosis - afair, it was Pokhlebkin who in 1970s found out
that the richest
people in the USSR - farmers in Cuban agricultural collective farms
(crops comparable with the US or canadian farmers) - had the worst
cases of avitaminosis as well - feeding mostly on vodka, smoked
sausage (salami-like) and white bread, as of "higher status" than the
bread we treat here.

3. So in most "culturally advanced" places, where customers do not
like "simple countryside tastes", they handsomely add wheat
flour to "black" bread. Having moved to Moscow, I had been getting
used to Muscovite bread which is mostly too sweet compared to
Ulyanovsk bakery, not to say in northern Russia's countryside it's
even more sour. Most Muscovites even prefer the Borodinsky brand of
bread, which lacks wheat but is extremely sweet (more sugar), calling
THIS black bread. Can't understand it at all. Traditional mass-baked
rhye bread brands are Darnitsky (from Darnitsa town in Ukraine) or
Ukrainsky (Ukraine) bread though an inventive technolo9gist at a
factory may change the recipe to less rhye and more sugar, or replace
live yeast with bakery powder which is already a sacriledge. In Moscow
there are about 8 big state bakeries, and they bake same brands with
different taste.

4. As in the villages it's easier to make yeast dough (or even so-called
sour one which ferments about the same but is much more sour),
countryside bread is usually sour and brown, or, BTW, it may be very
light (in colour) & plain, if
it is delivered from a bakery, not home-baked. In the country bakeries
they try desperately to be economical (see the beginning), so they
purt in less yeast, less sugar, etc. The Soviet way, of course, but
they are too fond of being economical even if that spoils the taste &
quality (but Stefan mentioned about the same when we discussed sour
cream, so it is not only my country's habit).

So that may be the reason for the words you cited.

bye,
Alex

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Phlip

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....