[Sca-cooks] OT/OOP Kvass Recipe

Terry Decker t.d.decker at att.net
Tue Feb 23 05:39:11 PST 2010


>>
>> 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

If you're referring to the mythical character of making beer from bread, the 
technique is recorded in the Sumerian "Hymn to Ninkasi" which is about 4000 
years old.  The Sumerians used a bread made from barley and honey.

BTW, R.C.B. should be "the Russian Cookery Book" by Molokhovets translated 
by Joyce Toomre (1992).

Bear 



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