Bread is Good

Russians eat a lot of bread: soup, salad, pelmeni, potatoes, pasta, kasha, tea – bread goes with everything. There’s even a special Russian dessert invented during the days of bare grocery-store shelves: a slice of bread spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar. In Russia, bread is put on the table for every meal. Why is that?

First of all, a meal without bread just feels wrong. This may be the genes of our hardworking peasant ancestors talking. Their main source of energy was kasha cooked with water (rather than milk) and rye bread. They ate chunks of bread with meatless cabbage soup, fresh and pickled cucumbers, boiled peas, scallions, and radishes, or sometimes just sprinkled with salt accompanied by a cup of kvas. We no longer have the need to stuff ourselves with bread, but somehow a meal just doesn’t seem complete without it.

Second, bread serves as a sort of utensil. In Russia, people know what to do with a fork and knife, but the latter tends to only make appearances for special occasions. During everyday meals it’s perfectly acceptable to maneuver food around your plate with bread when you need to prevent something from slipping away from your fork or to wipe up the last of your mashed potatoes. And although it may not be considered the height of refinement to clean the sauce off your plate with a piece of bread, at least it’s better than using your tongue.

Lastly, bread just tastes good.

In Russia, there is a somewhat blurry line between the “black” North and the “white” South. Northerners prefer bread that is baked with some rye flour. Because it comes out a bit dark, they call it “black” bread. The northern climate and soil are simply better suited to rye, so Russia’s North has been cultivating it for centuries, and people there have grown accustomed to its taste. In the South, however, they grow wheat, and they call their bread “white.”

During the second half of the twentieth century, stores all over the country were stocked with identical brick-shaped loaves of both white and black bread. The recipes were standardized and bread was always the same size. The taste of bread did not vary much – just a bit depending on the quality of the water and flour and the experience of the baker. It was tasty and so cheap that it was free in cafeterias at lunchtime; in the countryside, people bought it by the sackful to feed their pigs.

There were other types of bread: батон нарезной (basically, a baguette), булка французская (a French bulka or roll), хлеб ситный (a type of sourdough), рогалик обсыпной (a crescent roll), плетенка маковая (braided poppy-seed bread). But it was not until around ten years ago that a truly stunning array of breads appeared on store shelves. It all started, by the way, with the appearance of Western-style toasting bread – pre-sliced and packaged loaves that stayed “fresh” for weeks and were utterly tasteless.

Unfortunately, at least half of the bread sold in Russia today is of very poor quality. Some bakeries take the shortcut of using premade mixes, including leavening agents, taste-enhancing agents, accelerating agents, coloring agents, and aroma-enhancing agents. The bread looks pretty, but tastes like foam rubber. Others, out of sheer carelessness, produce bread that is sour, under-done, smells of yeast, and seems to have some sort of soot mixed in.

But if you choose your bakery with care and check the ingredients, you can find wonderful bread that you’ll want on your table every day. Or you can bake your own bread, assuming you’re ready to devote hours to measuring, mixing, and kneading – and are able to be philosophical about the occasional baking disaster.

Whole Wheat Bread with Seeds

Цельнозерновой пшеничный хлеб с семенами

400g (4 cups) whole wheat flour
5g (1 package) active dry yeast
15g (1 Tbsp) maple syrup
15g (1 Tbsp) olive oil
5g (1 tsp) sea salt
280g (1-1.25 cup) water
10g (2 tsp) cider vinegar
20g (3 Tbsp) each sunflower, pumpkin, and flax seeds
15g (2 Tbsp) hemp, chia, and sesame seeds

Roast all the seeds by slowly frying them in an unoiled frying pan. Cool to room temperature.

Proof the yeast in a cup of the water (it should be 105-110º for active dry yeast, check your package for optimal temperature), then add the remainder of the water, the maple syrup, olive oil, vinegar and flour (all liquids should be at room temperature). Mix the dough together thoroughly and form it into a ball.

Place the dough into an oiled glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm place for an hour and a half.

Knead the dough for about five minutes, adding in the seeds and salt. Form it back into a ball, and place it under a round form like a colander (if you want to control the shape), then cover with a kitchen towel and place in a warm place for another hour and a half. You may actually put the dough on your baking tray to rise, to avoid having to transfer it to the tray after rising.

The dough should double in size or more. Heat the oven to 425º F, and line a baking tray with baking parchment, or prepare a baking stone. Place the dough carefully on the tray, and make a small, shallow incision across the middle of the top surface with a knife.

As you are putting the bread in the oven, spritz the sides of the oven with water, being sure not to get any on the bread. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 375º, and continue baking for another 15-20 minutes.

Remove the bread from the oven and allow it to cool on a rack.