[Sca-cooks] OT/OOP Kvass Recipe

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Feb 23, 2010, at 1:22 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> shoshanna said:
> 
> <<< I also have a recipe to make it with rye bread and not just the flour/malt.
> One of our brewers made it for Mid-Winter 2008 for my Russian Feast &
> Zakuska table. >>>
> 
> Yes, I think most of the recipes I have for making kvass start with bread, rather than grain or flour.
> 
> For some more info on kvass. In the BEVERAGES section of the Florilegium:
> kvass-msg         (73K)  7/ 4/04  Russian drink made from bread or grains.
> http://www.florilegium.org/files/BEVERAGES/kvass-msg.html

That would certainly make sense, especially as sugar is a main fermentable and it is (or was; I gather it is now generally purchased in two-liter plastic bottles like Coca-Cola) made in the home.

On the other hand, just to throw a possibility on the table before dismissing it, how sure are we that this isn't simply one of those situations where someone says something outlandish and it grows legs, one of those things that everybody knows, like medieval people eating rotten meat, Abyssinians (or whoever it was) having their faces on their torsos, or cuskynoles being formed with the back of a heavy knife? 

I'm just wondering about the age of the recipe I had found in English (not sure, but I can't imagine it's from much after the Russian Revolution), the fact that this kvass is made, essentially, from bread. You just have to make the bread in a specific way. And in what way, if any, the process has changed over the years, and how old and widespread, as has been discussed in other threads on kvass, the stuff really is.

Adamantius






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