[Sca-cooks] Pretzels and braided bread

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Mon Feb 25 14:17:22 PST 2013


No problem finding it through Google Books. Try searching
under krendel breads.

Food Culture In Russia And Central Asia by Glenn R. Mack, Asele Surina says "Krendel' is similar to a large, soft pretzel and can be either sweet , with raisins and nuts, or else savory. A sign shaped like a large golden krendel' is often hung over Russian bakeries even to this day, a tradition from European bakers' guilds in the Middle Ages."

Darra Goldstein in A Taste of Russia says, "The Name Day celebrant customarily hosted a party, inviting friends and family to share in the traditional treat of krendel', a large, rich pretzel-shaped loaf of sweet bread. Along with the krendel', there might be khvorost, thin, deep-fried cookie…" She includes a recipe under Name Day Loaf. Goldstein writes there "Krendel' is a pretzel-shaped loaf of sweet bread. Both the name and the shape of the loaf originated with the German bakers who were numerous in Russia from the late thirteenth century on, especially in the merchant town of Novgorod. Krendel' is a corruption of the German Kringel, a round cookie."   

Johnnae

On Feb 25, 2013, at 4:44 PM, Stephanie Ross wrote:

> Thumbing through the Russian Cooking Recipes in the Time-Life Series "Foods
> of the World", there is a very interesting recipe for a bread called
> "krendel" which is a twisted/braided type of bread that in the shape of a
> pretzel and has fruits and nuts baked inside it. Google search has yielded
> nothing but modern recipes for krendl/krendel bread, reportedly originally
> from Germany. Anyone here heard of it, and could it possibly be period for
> our uses? In Russia it is baked on Saint's/naming days as a version of
> their birthday cake, I suppose.
> AEschwynne



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