Hello friends, I suggest you bake homemade bread according to V. V Pokhlebkin’s recipe. The recipe is so quick and simple that I didn’t even believe that such a tasty and aromatic bread could turn out. William Vasilyevich Pokhlebkin believes that making bread at home is easier than boiling an egg. That's tempting, isn't it? But, nevertheless, he turned out to be right.
Recently I already offered you quick bread, it was Georgian lavash (to read the recipe, follow the link). But this homemade bread recipe is prepared much faster, although yeast dough is also used. Onions add a stunning aroma to the bread, it turns out incomparably, I recommend trying it.
How to bake homemade bread
Products:
- 35-50 grams of raw yeast or 11 grams of dry yeast (1 tbsp)
- 1 tbsp water
- 1 small onion
- 1/3 tbsp vegetable oil
- Flour approximately 380-400 g
- Salt to taste
Preparation:
To begin, take 0.5 tbsp of lukewarm water, add yeast and 1-2 tbsp of flour, mix well and set aside.
Finely chop 1 onion; although I had a small onion, I only used 2 tablespoons of onion. Pour the yeast mixture into a deep bowl, add 0.5 cups of water (milk is fine), stir in the vegetable oil, add onion and salt. And gradually adding flour to knead the dough. V.V. Pokhlebkin did not indicate the proportion of flour, explaining that everyone’s flour is different and different amounts may be required; you need to knead a soft, elastic dough. It took me about 380-400 grams of flour.
Knead the dough until it stops sticking to your hands.
Then we form buns the size of an apple and roll each bun into a flat cake about 1-1.5 cm.
Leave for about a couple of minutes and bake in a preheated oven until done. I baked at 200 for about 25 minutes. I overexposed it a little, so I still need less. According to the recipe, the bread needed to be baked for 10 minutes, during which time it didn’t even brown, so I baked it longer.
Remove the finished bread from the oven and cover with a towel for 25 minutes.
I was pleasantly surprised that homemade bread can be prepared so quickly. Onions don't give off a strong smell, they give such a delicious aroma. It's great, isn't it, to make bread in 30 minutes? I promise to please you with more interesting recipes, subscribe to updates and you will see for yourself.
What explains the high consumption of bread in our country, in particular in Russia? First of all, we must keep in mind that Russian national bread is black bread, i.e. bread made from rye flour, yeasty, sour. And this explains a lot. As the latest biochemical studies have shown, such bread is well digestible, especially if it is made with sourdough, and not just with pressed yeast. And this is exactly how Russian national rye bread was prepared. Sourdough is part of the old dough that remains on the bottom and walls of the bowl in which the dough is kneaded. It is rich in vitamins, enzymes and other substances beneficial to our body, which are further activated when they enter the oven along with the dough. For example, the crispy crust of black bread is one of the most important sources of replenishing our body with vitamin B1.
History knows an interesting fact, which by chance served as an experiment, which very clearly showed what the sudden deprivation of black bread could lead to for a Russian person. During the Russian-Turkish War in 1736, a 54,000-strong Russian army entered the enemy territory of the Crimean Khanate. Convoys with rye flour, which were being transported to Russia, were stuck somewhere in the steppes of Ukraine. I had to bake bread from local wheat flour. And then illnesses began in the army. “What made the soldiers weak most of all,” the adjutant of the commander of this army, Christopher Georg von Manstein, noted in his notes, was that they were accustomed to eating sour rye bread, but here they had to eat unleavened wheat bread.”
The Russians’ commitment to black bread and, conversely, the difficulties experienced by other peoples when switching from their usual unleavened bread to sour bread, have been repeatedly noted both in specialized medical literature and in fiction by particularly observant writers. During his trip to the Caucasus A.S. Pushkin noticed that the captured Turks who were building the Georgian Military Road could not get used to Russian black bread and therefore complained in general about the food they were given, although it was good. “This reminded me,” said Pushkin, “of the words of my friend Sheremetev upon his return from Paris: “It’s bad, brother, to live in Paris: there’s nothing to eat, you can’t ask for black bread.” When, a few days later, Pushkin himself found himself without black bread and he was offered lavash, he responded to this with such harsh lines in his diary: “In an Armenian village built in the mountains on the banks of a river, instead of lunch I ate the damned churek, Armenian bread, baked in the form of a flat cake in half with ash, which the Turkish were so worried about prisoners in the Daryal Gorge. I would give a lot for a piece of Russian black bread, which was so disgusting to them.”
It must be said that A.S. himself. Pushkin was unfair in his review of lavash, which was supposedly “half and half with ash.” As you know, small pieces of coal often stick to lavash, especially to those flatbreads that are stuck to the lower walls of the tandoor, but these pieces are easily cleaned off and do not affect the taste of lavash in any way. But this is what the unusual appearance and taste of bread means! From this it is clear that the habit of bread, like no other product, is due to such deep national traditions that it gives rise to a certain conditioned reflex and affects the human psyche as a whole. That is why bread is a product that determines the perception of food as a whole.
That is why it is not surprising that the habit and love of black sour bread among the Russian people from ancient times was so strong that it even had serious historical consequences for the entire history of Russia. The fact is that one of the most important schisms in the history of Europe - the division of churches into Western and Eastern, into Catholicism and Orthodoxy - occurred largely because of bread. In the middle of the 11th century, as is known, a dispute broke out in the Christian Church about the Eucharist, that is, about whether leavened (sour) bread should be consumed, as was done in Byzantium and Rus', or unleavened (unleavened bread) according to the practice of the Catholic Church. Byzantium, which stood at the head of the Eastern Church, was forced to oppose Pope Leo IX's ban on eating sour bread, since if it had not done this, it would have lost the alliance and support of Rus'. In Russia, sour bread was perceived as a symbol of national identity, and giving it up would be impossible for Russians.
Over the centuries, the art of bread baking in Russia has received exceptional development, as a result of which the variety of varieties and types of national bread for which Russia has always been famous was created. This process has not ended, by the way, to this day. Russian bakers have developed a technology for baking such types of bread as peeled, table, Barvikha, and have mastered baking up to a dozen varieties of dietary bread, including doctor's, health, protein-bran, milk, achloride, and salt-free. At the same time, traditional bread varieties, proven by the centuries-old experience of the people, such as custard, peklevanny, Borodinsky, Krasnoselsky, kalachi, sitnik, and saika, are widespread in the country. Most of these old varieties date back to the 14th and 15th centuries.
The division of bread into numerous varieties in Russia is associated with differences in raw materials (flour), and in cooking technology (to an even greater extent), and in the size of bread in different regions, regions, and localities of the country. Thus, all large-sized bread weighing over two kilograms per piece was considered to be by weight until the mid-50s of the 20th century and was sold by weight. Bread of lesser weight was considered piecemeal and was sold not by weight, but by piece. This includes various loaves, bars, buns, saiki, vitushki, swindlers, that is, predominantly white bread, which received special development only from the second half of the 19th century.
As for the quality of flour, in Russia it was divided into five sorts, or grades, and in baking, the grades were divided into two more large categories - sieve and sieve - depending on whether the flour was sifted through a sieve or through a sieve (their cells are different ). The dough for sieve breads was also always kneaded with water or kvass, and the dough for sieve breads was always mixed with whey or yogurt. For each type of bread in Russian there are its own names, which, as a rule, cannot be translated into other languages. Most types of bread products are firmly “tied” to a certain locality or region; they can often be tasted only where they have been produced since ancient times. These are Moscow rolls and saiki, Smolensk pretzels, Valdai bagels, Kaluga malted dough. All these types of bread products usually did not cross the boundaries of a very limited geographical area and were preserved in an unchanged, traditional form. Sometimes they were exported to other regions of Russia, but only in finished form; it was almost impossible to prepare them in any other place, preserving their originality. The reason for this is not only the secrets of local water and local flour milling.
In recent decades, when regional differences within the country are increasingly disappearing, when the difference between local and all-Union standards is increasingly leveled out, some types of local bread products are gradually disappearing. But not all. The most famous and popular types and varieties of national bread continue to live to this day, and most importantly, their popularity is growing. These include, for example, cod, sitniki (sieve bread) and kalachi. These three main types of national Russian bread, baked from wheat (white) flour, are the only “wheat exceptions” against the background of the variety of Russian rye breads.
What are they? All this is also yeast, sour bread, but made differently. Saiki is Russian white bread with a very thin, soft crust, unlike French rolls with a crispy, dense crust. To make saj bread, you need to add milk and a little butter to the dough, or better yet, beef fat. The sack dough is loose and soft, but not particularly dense, that is, it has almost no voids. Although it contains a lot of yeast, it is not fermented, it is not allowed to rise - it is immediately put into the oven, which is why carbon dioxide does not have time to accumulate in the dough, which is why it is not penetrated with holes.
Of all the white breads in Russia, the most crusty is kalach. This is why they especially love him. Wellness has always been an indicator of high quality bread, more precisely, one of five main indicators: appearance (shape and “look”), color, taste, aroma (smell, spirit) and openness. Kalachi belongs to sieve breads, i.e. made from fine, high-grade and also very dry flour, repeatedly passed through a sieve. This flour bakes well and makes dough well suited. In addition, it is allowed to mature, rise not once, but twice, it is kneaded well, also repeatedly. Therefore, the rushes come out lush, crusty, with a soft crust that does not even have time to brown, and with a viscous, elastic, pleasant bread crumb.
Kalachis are a kind of super-seed cakes, and the flour for them is even drier, even more finely sifted, and the dough is better seasoned, more doughy.
In appearance, the kalach is unique; it differs sharply from all known types of bread that have an oblong, cylindrical or round shape. The roll consists of three parts: a thick “tummy”, a crispy, crunchy “lip” hanging over it and a “handle” or “arm” supporting them both. The taste of kalach is as original and unique as its appearance.
Moscow and Murom rolls have long been known in Russia. But the Murom ones remained only in proverbs, and the Moscow ones have survived to this day. Thanks to its high quality, Moscow kalach has long been famous throughout Russia. “Moscow rolls are hot like fire,” people said approvingly.
For kalach, not just any flour is used, but special, well-seasoned, dry, often sifted durum wheat flour. Nothing can come from freshly ground flour. The second secret - the most important - lies in the processing of the dough: it must be kneaded repeatedly and for a long time by human hands. Kalach in this regard is a very capricious type of bread. It turns out that the dough for it cannot be kneaded or baked using mechanisms - then it will not fit and will not rise. It also has one more feature: it must be kept in the cold. Previously, good rolls were crushed right on the ice. To do this, metal boxes were made in the tables and filled with ice, which made the surface of the table on which the dough was kneaded, be it tin or even a thin board, cold and icy. Even now, when making rolls, after kneading the dough by hand, they immediately put it in the refrigerator. But the fact is that the dough, saturated with carbon dioxide, must completely retain it until it is placed in the oven, and the metal hands of the mixers “knock out” this gas from the dough, and putting it in the cold after kneading, and not during it, allows some of the gas to leave, although it must be “frozen” entirely.
Bread is not only the basis of the Russian national table, but also something more. He is a symbol of national well-being. That is why there are customs associated with bread in Russia that have survived many centuries and have survived almost unchanged to this day. This, for example, is the ancient Russian custom of greeting friends, dear, honored, noble guests, newlyweds, new residents with bread and salt, that is, carrying out a large loaf of black bread with a salt shaker on a towel or tray. Bread means a full table, and salt is an ancient and already forgotten symbol of protection, saving a house from fire; later it became a high measure of the value and taste of food, that is, a symbol of good food.
Carrying out bread and salt as the highest and most solemn sign of popular affection has been preserved to this day.
In addition to Russian-type bread, there are a considerable number of national types of bread, which in the post-war period went beyond their former regional boundaries and successfully began to penetrate the all-Russian market.
The famous Ukrainian palyanitsa is very popular - a lush, very crusty snow-white loaf with a crispy crust - a visor shifted to one side, sometimes baked from the highest grades of wheat flour with the addition of whey. But palyanitsa, although beautiful, is not as versatile as bread. It is too tender and is good only very fresh with butter, milk, sour cream, which enhance its taste.
Moldavian gray wheat bread, baked from simple unrefined flour, has good density, a wonderful strong bread aroma and bright taste. Black Baltic bread made from a mixture of rye and wheat flour with the addition of molasses, caraway seeds and special starters is very good and highly valued by lovers. This is sweet and sour Tartu bread, and the famous Riga, and very pleasant Tallinn bread, and gray Estonian seppik, and Palanga, similar to Riga, and Minsk bread.
In recent years, unleavened and yeasted types of bread from Transcaucasia and Central Asia have begun to be regularly sold in different cities of our country - Azerbaijani churek, Armenian lavash and matnakash, Kazakh flatbreads and Uzbek patyri and obinon. These are breads either with a high fat content or flavored with vegetable additives - onions, dill, cumin (azhgon) - they harmonize well with national cuisine and are an excellent addition to milk and dairy products.
The range of types of bread in our country, due to the multinational composition of the population, is wider than anywhere else in the world, but it does not, of course, exhaust all the types of bread that humanity has invented. In Scandinavia and Finland, for example, people have long been accustomed to eating hard, dry bread - knäckebred. Starting from the late 50s, some types of this bread were introduced in our country, but in slightly modified versions. This is how a large family of crispbreads arose - from black rye peeled to wheat dessert and amateur. And although such bread was not at all typical for our country, whose population has long been accustomed to soft, fresh types of bread, it found its consumer and took root among us. After all, crispy bread, like crackers, which we are accustomed to using mainly as a confectionery product, is essentially canned bread. It was especially appreciated by tourists, geologists, and hunters. And in some cases, dry bread is not only more convenient than soft bread (it is lighter, more compact, withstands transportation better, cannot become stale or change its quality), but also more pleasant with certain types of dishes. For example, crispy bread contrasts nicely with soft processed cheeses “Viola” and “Yantar”, with shrimp oil; they are indispensable as a basis for pasty, creamy food compositions that are difficult to spread on regular bread due to high humidity. These are, for example, pates, canned fish, curd pastes (salty and sweet versions), canned vegetable pastes (eggplant caviar), thick sauces, etc. Together with a thin layer of butter, these products fit perfectly on crispbread and look beautiful on them and are well absorbed with them. Hot appetizers on crispbread are excellent - gratinated sandwiches, that is, sandwiches with pates heated in the oven, sprinkled with dry grated cheese on top, which melts during the heating process and creates, together with the softened and aromatic dry bread, a single whole - a small dish with a peculiar, completely unusual taste.
And although this use of crispbread is still relatively weakly widespread, it once again speaks of the diverse service of bread in our everyday life, of the uniqueness and eternal novelty of its countless varieties.
Yes, a loaf of well-baked bread is one of the greatest inventions of the human mind - we can repeat after K.A. Timiryazev. Bread is a food that cannot be replaced by anything. “When we get sick, we are the last to lose our taste for bread; and as soon as it appears again, it serves as a sign of recovery. Bread can be consumed at any time of the day, at any age, in any mood; it makes other foods tastier and is the main cause of both good and bad digestion. Whatever it is eaten with - meat or any other dish - it does not lose its attractiveness.” These words belong to Antoine Auguste Parmentier, who lived in the 18th century, but they seem to have been spoken today, because neither the role of bread in our diet nor our attitude towards it has changed since then. On the contrary, we are becoming more and more aware of the enormous importance of bread.
Cold table - appetizers, salads.
The cold table, that is, dishes served cold and not hot or heated, is the first serving and includes the most diverse, most heterogeneous dishes, both in the composition of the products and in the principles of preparation. Suffice it to say that these can be either completely raw, unprocessed products, such as vegetables, fruits, berries, herbs (not even cut up, but simply washed), or products that have undergone lengthy and complex processing, including repeated heating, roasting, smoking, boiling, etc., but served cold. These include various sausages, ham (ham), hot smoked fish, jellied meats, and jellies. Between these “poles” of the cold table there are a lot of other dishes, the preparation of which requires very different, sometimes combined, processing. Thus, fish caviar is a natural product, however, it is subject to processing - removal of the film, washing and salting. And cold roast beef is prepared from a hot dish: the meat is fried, and then cooled and aged.
Cold table dishes also include combined dishes and products consisting of many or several products - from sandwiches to salads. And these combinations, in turn, can consist either only of cold, minimally processed products (green salads), or of combinations of cold products and products that have undergone various types of processing - vinaigrette: this combines, say, raw products (onions), boiled (potatoes, beets), salted or pickled (cucumber, sauerkraut, herring).
Thus, the product processing technology cannot be the main, defining feature of cold table dishes. A common feature for this type of dish in all national cuisines is the external sign - cold state. It is in the cold state that some products reveal the greatest degree of development of taste and aroma.
In Russian national cuisine, this type of dish is called, however, differently - appetizers. The sign that unites them is somewhat different and deeper. An appetizer is something to start a meal with, something to start eating with. And what you snack on must be washed down, that is, flavored with wet, liquid food. Thus, the Russian concept of appetizer is better suited for defining the place and role of a cold table in a modern menu. However, we must not forget that such a concept arose only when the cuisine was fully formed and when the range of cold or snack table dishes itself expanded significantly. This happened in the 18th century, not only in Russia, but also in a number of other countries, for example in Sweden, where their own definition of a snack table also arose - “smorgosburdet” (literally “sandwich table”), that is, a table consisting of bread and any product that is edible cold and is a harmonious addition to this bread. At first, the main additive among the Swedes was butter and anything that could be spread or put on bread: honey, cottage cheese, cheese, a piece of meat, fish or boiled vegetable, salmon caviar, whitefish, smelt, etc.
In Russia, snacks also developed from the peasant custom early in the morning, immediately after sleep, even before going to work, to quickly eat something ready-made, cold, not requiring any preparation (a piece of bread, an onion) and wash it down with kvass or yogurt. Among some peoples, where the traditions and skills of the peasant population have become basic and decisive for the entire nation, the cold snack table has become the main one, and the hot one - more rare, additional or festive. This is, for example, the national Latvian cuisine; Finnish peasant cuisine was very close to it according to these principles, and the Swedish “smorgosburdet” arose and developed on the same basis. Such a peasant snack table necessarily included: bread, onions, cheese (cottage cheese), hard-boiled eggs and, as an addition to them, pickles and pickles (mushrooms, cabbage) or ready-made ones, also designed for long-term storage and preparation of smoked foods (lard, homemade sausage, smoked fish). It is quite natural that all these products, which are concentrated, spicy and difficult to digest food, required “discharge”. Therefore, all the cuisines of the northern and Baltic peoples, where a cold table is the main and constant one, include one hot dish - hot boiled potatoes and, as another discharge agent, yogurt (as a drink).
The Russian snack table as an independent peasant table did not develop. The Russian people have long been accustomed to consider hot food the main food, and the main hot food is a liquid dish, “bread”, or soups, the first of which has always been cabbage soup.
That is why snacks, which became widespread in the 17th and 18th centuries mainly at the table of the nobility, from the very beginning included to a greater extent foods that were easy to digest or stimulated the appetite, since their role was reduced to being not the main food, but only an introduction to lunch.
So, along with bread, black (pressed, grainy) and red caviar, red freshly salted, salted, dried fish (salmon, herring, roach), boiled cold fish (sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, sterlet). Almost no additions to this food were required, except perhaps a small accent in the form of black pepper, onions (for salmon and herring), horseradish (for boiled fish).
At the same time, among the poorer population, the snack table consisted of pickles and pickles - mushrooms and cabbage. To make them filling, eat them with plenty of bread. This was caused, of course, by need.
Only from the 18th century did meat and dairy products (cheeses, sausages, ham) appear on the snack table in Russia, and butter appeared only in the 19th century; At the same time, the salted-boiled fish snack table was replenished with smoked fish (balyk, stellate sturgeon, shemaya, zalom), and in the 20th century all kinds of canned food appeared, which in a sense even supplanted the previous snacks. It is the increase in concentration and calorie content of a cold table that makes it necessary to supplement it with vegetable dishes. Thus, at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, along with vegetable pickles, vinaigrettes and then green salads, which until that time were served only with second fried dishes, appeared on the Russian snack table.
Thus, the Russian snack table turned out to be extremely diverse in the composition and nature of food raw materials. But with all its diversity, it cannot at all replace regular nutrition; it cannot be considered absolutely necessary. The peculiarity of the cold table is the presence of concentrated, spicy, savory dishes, and this in turn sets its framework. The snack table offers not to eat, but to taste, not to get enough, but to awaken the appetite. The value of most cold table dishes also helps to maintain its boundaries and maintain its proper place in the overall diet. Replacing a regular lunch with a cold sausage and canned snack with an abundance of butter, cheese and similar high-calorie foods is even a well-known sign of a lack of culture. Some exceptions from snack-type dishes are only salads, vinaigrettes and fermentations, which gradually turned into a mass snack, included in the number of dishes of the most ordinary lunch. That's why we can consider them as the first serve of our everyday table.
SALADS
Even on the eve of the First World War, the word “salad” was new in Russia; people did not know it at all, and only people who had been abroad or used cookbooks with recipes for French cuisine knew how to prepare salads at home. And they practically only used one or two types of lettuce.
A modern dictionary explains the concept of “salad” as a dish of finely chopped pieces of vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, mushrooms, and cold fruits. This emphasizes two characteristic features of this dish: crumbled and cold. In our current understanding, “salad” is a combined dish prepared quickly, in a hurry. Hence, in a figurative sense, we often use the word “salad” (or even more often “vinaigrette”) as a synonym for mishmash, confusion, a combination of dissimilar parts.
However, “salad” originally meant something completely different. And even something opposite to how we understand it now, for its main feature was such qualities as uniformity and integrity.
Initially, salad was understood as an exclusively vegetable dish, moreover, only from raw green leafy vegetables and garden herbs, which until the 20th century were called salad plants. Salads as a dish came to international cuisine from Italy, more precisely from Ancient Rome, where a salad was defined as a single dish consisting of endive, parsley and onions, seasoned with honey, pepper, salt and vinegar.
Thus, salads were known 2500 years ago. However, it was only at the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th century that salads went beyond the Apennine Peninsula and came to France, initially as an exquisite court dish served with roast meat. It was in France in the 17th - 18th centuries that salads found a second home and received further development. This was explained not only by the general high level of French culinary art, but also by the fact that it was in France, with its mild, but cooler than in Italy, climate that salad plants were especially good at producing abundant, juicy and sweet-tasting foliage. In the Middle Ages, the salad was prepared from green onions, garlic, mint and parsley leaves. This composition itself was spicy and harmonized well with the roast. Then the French introduced lettuce into the salad - a plant with a neutral taste, consisting of only leaves. It was lettuce that received the name salad in all countries, including ours, because the first French salads, which later became famous in other European countries, consisted of it. This plant was named lettuce in honor of the food prepared from it.
Very fragrant bread! Don't be afraid, it doesn't smell like onions at all, but like some kind of spices. And the crumb of this bread is very white, like milk bread. The bread is named after V.V. Pokhlebkin, who is very respected by me, who in the book “Secrets of Good Kitchen” described the preparation of homemade bread (with onions).
Onion bread recipe:
- 1 medium onion finely grated
- 260 ml water
- 1 tbsp. Sahara
- 1 tsp salt
- 1.5 tbsp. vegetable oil
- 400 g flour
- 1 tsp dry yeast
I will also quote from Pokhlebkin:
“Yes, making bread is the simplest, the very first action in culinary logic. And from an educational, pedagogical point of view, even more so. For no other culinary achievement convinces a person so much of his abilities and ability to cook, does not give him such culinary confidence and dexterity, like the ability to bake bread with your own hands. This has been the case from time immemorial. But this turns out to be even more true today.
For we are now accustomed to considering bread as something that is no longer subject to home cooking, that requires some kind of complex, factory equipment and experience, that we receive ready-made, like shoes or clothes, canned food or mineral drinks.
Meanwhile, bread is the basis of life and the table. You cannot live without bread, without it any lunch is not lunch, any dish lacks something. But baking your own bread seems difficult. We got this idea from the literature of the 19th century, which described how in the early-early morning, almost at night, at 3-4 o’clock, while the oven, which had been heated in the evening, had not yet had time to cool down, the housewife got up, began to knead the dough and put bread in the oven .
This process was inconvenient in terms of time and labor-intensive, but even at that time it was quite fast: already at 5-6 o’clock in the morning, that is, after one and a half to two hours, a fresh loaf, bursting with heat and a grainy spirit, was ripe.
But in a healthy, hard-working family they baked bread almost every day - two or three times a week, so as to always have it fresh. Nowadays, with modern home appliances - a gas stove - baking bread takes no more than 15 - 30 minutes.
Of course, we are not talking about loaves weighing a kilogram or more or loaves. In order to quickly bake bread dough in 8-10 minutes, you need to give it the shape of a flat cake, at most the size of your palm and no more than 1 cm thick, and in the middle of this flat cake you need to make a dent so that the dough does not swell and does not burn. This will not change the taste of the bread, the bakedness will improve, and the baking time will be reduced to a minimum.
What needs to be done? What do you need to have?
1. Take: 35 - 50 grams of yeast (from a third to half a pack), 0.5 cups of water, 1 - 2 tablespoons of flour. Mix everything together in a cup and set aside.
2. Chop the onion finely or mince it.
3. Light the stove in the kitchen (oven).
4. Pour the yeast mixture into a large bowl, add half a glass of water or milk (whatever you have on hand) and about a third of a glass of sunflower oil. Mix everything quickly but carefully, add chopped chopped onion, salt (a pinch or two), then gradually add flour and stir all the time until a dough forms that does not stick to your hands.
It is important not to miss this moment. The main thing is that the dough does not turn out too hard; This means that the flour must be added gradually until the dough, while still remaining very soft and tender, at the same time completely lags behind the hands. Having kneaded this dough well, make balls of it about the size of an apple or a little smaller and flatten each of these balls into a flat cake about one to one and a half centimeters thick.
Place these cakes on a baking sheet or, better yet, on a sheet and, at a distance of about one and a half to two centimeters from each other, draw deep lines along these cakes with a knife, making them seem striped.
Let the bread stand for 2-3 minutes before placing it in the oven, or place it in the oven immediately, because by this time it will already be hot in the kitchen. The stove (oven) heat should be moderate and the sheet of tortillas should be placed on the top shelf of the oven. Notice the time. After 10 minutes, look and pierce with a pointed match. If the cakes are browned, but there are still traces of dough on the match, let them stand in the oven for another 2 - 3 minutes. But no more.
Take it out, lay it out on a wooden board (plywood), cover it with a towel or piece of linen. Your bread is ready. The whole process, including cutting, took no more than 20 minutes. A delay in time can only be because the oven bakes poorly or has not been preheated well.
Try the cooked bread after 25 minutes, not earlier: only then will it acquire its real taste. So how? Tasty! And how! And it’s not difficult at all. It's downright nonsensical.
And why?
Let's figure it out..."
Maybe there is a book by Pokhlebkin in your library? About tea, vodka, porridge, pancakes, entertaining cooking? Then this is not surprising: the circulation of his books approaches one hundred million, and he is published and republished all over the world. “A funny pseudonym,” you probably thought, “William Pokhlebkin is somehow exquisitely culinary.” The way it is. When a highly educated person has a hobby, he becomes a professional at it. This was the case when doctor V.V. Dahl compiled the “Living Dictionary of the Russian Language”, doctor A.P. Chekhov became a classic of Russian literature. And Candidate of Historical Sciences V.V. Pokhlebkin became a historian of Russian cuisine.
Pokhlebkin William Vasilievich
His full name is William August. Born into the family of the revolutionary leader Mikhailov, the child received a revolutionary name: Wil-August. It is composed of the initials of the leader and the name of Bebel, a German revolutionary.
Pokhlebkin William Vasilyevich is from the generation that in 1941, immediately after the graduation party, went to the front. He was a scout and went through the entire war. He knew Serbo-Croatian, German, Italian and Swedish. In his last year he served as an orderly in a soldier’s kitchen, where his talents began to be discovered.
After the war, he graduated from MGIMO and worked at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences. Not finding common ground with his superiors, he quits and conducts research privately. His royalties from translations support the Scandinavian Collection magazine.
For a long time he lived on 38 kopecks a day, eating only tea and black bread. His recipes were published in the Ogonyok magazine. The culinary column in the Nedelya newspaper was so valued that people bought the newspaper only because of it. “Science and Life” published two of his books in parts on its pages.
He was married twice, but family life did not work out. The children, daughter Gudrun and son August, now live abroad.
The scientist ended his life tragically - his body with traces of numerous wounds was found in the apartment on April 13, 2000. He was buried at the Golovinsky cemetery.
"The History of Vodka"
This is the name of one of William Vasilyevich’s books. And he himself is called “who took Russian vodka from the Poles.” In international trade in the twentieth century, a situation arose when it was necessary to confirm the beginning of distillation in Rus'.
Strange, but neither the Institute of History nor the Institute of Fermentation Products could document the authenticity of the recipe for Russian vodka. Then Pokhlebkin got down to business and proved that its production began in Russia a hundred years earlier than Poland.
The arbitration court confirmed this, and now real vodka can only be advertised in our country.
Bread
William Vasilyevich Pokhlebkin collected Russian recipes with love. He describes in detail the chemical processes that occur as the dough matures and the bread bakes. Explains the difference between a metal sheet and a baking sheet, comparing baking results.
It turns out that all nations produce bread differently, and this largely depends on the hearth. Hearth bread was baked in a Russian oven, the baking sheet was used for sweet pastries, and the sheet was used for cookies.
He begins his story about bread with a simple recipe, which he advises to immediately cook in a gas oven. It takes 15-30 minutes and the result is a delicious flatbread.
Here is the recipe: fifty grams of yeast (this is half a pack) is dissolved in 125 ml of water (half a glass), adding two tablespoons of flour. Set them aside and prepare the filling - finely chop the onion.
Then turn on the oven and continue preparing the dough. Add half a glass of milk and a third glass of vegetable oil, onion, two pinches of salt to the dough and begin to add flour, stirring constantly. The dough should be soft and easily come off your hands.
Flatbreads are made from this mass, the sheet is placed on the top shelf of the oven and baked for ten minutes over moderate heat. Then they are laid out on a wooden board and covered with a towel. You can try it after 25 minutes - then the bread will finally ripen.
Kitchen
Pokhlebkin William Vasilyevich collected recipes for Russian cuisine bit by bit. It turns out that at the beginning of the twentieth century it was so vast and rich that it was compared to the French one. The author notes several stages of its formation, each of which left a significant mark.
Russian cuisine is divided into two tables: lenten and fast. They, in turn, are divided into noble and simple. The regional division of the country also influences culinary traditions.
Pokhlebkin tries all the options, all the examples of dishes himself, and only then recommends them to his readers. This was used in the editorial office of Ogonyok, where he brought the next recipe. Usually it has already been prepared and tasted.
William Vasilyevich derived five laws of bread baking. Having mastered them, it is easy to cook with any number of products, even with some missing ingredients. I compiled 15 tips for the cook and 10 reminders for the kitchen. Explained the difference between frying and baking. It turns out that the kebab is baked! He taught me how to choose a pan for dumplings and a frying pan for stewing and frying.
For a young housewife, his books contain enough experience to learn how to cook.
Historical information about Russian food
What did our ancestors eat when there were no potatoes? It turns out there are a lot of delicious dishes. Turnips steamed in a Russian oven became sweet; oatmeal was added to it and eaten with pleasure. They also made jelly from turnips.
They used a lot of river fish, distinguishing it by taste and suitability for certain dishes. Mushrooms were also prepared differently and in different ways. They made kvass, honey, and urine.
Pancakes used to be called “mliny”, from the word “mlet”. They were a ritual dish, baked red and served as a symbol of the sun.
For all names, William Pokhlebkin gives descriptions of recipes and a detailed method of preparation. He believed that if there is a lack of food, you cannot cook poorly, you need to do it even more nutritiously and usefully.
He writes a lot about pickling, compared to which pickling deprives foods of vitamins. Teaches how to prepare vegetables and fruits correctly. Modern dietetics has only now begun to promote healthy food processing, but Pokhlebkin covered its biochemistry in detail a long time ago.
National dishes
Pokhlebkin William Vasilyevich compares recipes of Russian cuisine with recipes of the peoples of the USSR, Scandinavian, Finnish cooking methods. He is also a connoisseur of European cuisine. Reading his books greatly broadens your horizons.
Pokhlebkin talks about sour milk in great detail, talking about the fermentation process and its types. Ayran, yogurt, Varenets are from the cuisine of neighboring peoples. And in Russia there was cheese milk. This is what yogurt was called before.
In general, milk was not processed in any way until the nineteenth century. They drank it raw and made cottage cheese. Butter appeared on the table quite recently by historical standards.
French chefs enriched Russian cuisine - they began to make salads, casseroles, minced meat, finely chop fillings into pies, make sauces, and mix foods. Before this, there was a tendency to cook the whole carcass or plant, even vegetables were boiled separately.
Okroshka
William Pokhlebkin collected several recipes for various okroshkas. All of them are real folk dishes. There was a time in the summer in peasant farming when, in order to avoid fire, it was forbidden to light stoves. A royal decree was issued on this in 1571. Although this dish has been known as “radish with kvass” for more than a thousand years.
Okroshka is included in cold soups, including tyuri and botvinya. It turns out that the okroshka recipe that is now made in our country has nothing in common with the real dish.
First of all, no sausage. Since okroshka, as an everyday dish, was prepared from various leftovers, three types of meat were put in: pig, poultry and game. Not all fish were suitable, only tench, perch or pike perch for their sweetish taste.
Secondly, it was not bread kvass that was added to it, but more sour white kvass. It was flavored with spices and sometimes a little mochen or pickles were added.
The basis was boiled vegetables. Greens and fresh cucumbers made up half of the vegetable volume. Hard-boiled eggs and sour cream were added before eating.
William Pokhlebkin: books
Having started with collaboration in compiling the famous “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food,” William Pokhlebkin continued this topic in his monographs dedicated to national cuisines.
He reveals “The Secrets of Good Cuisine”, writes a study “Tea and Vodka in Russia”. Raising the layer of times, he systematized the history of Russian culinary culture and the most important food products.
William Pokhlebkin's cookbooks are written easily, with digressions and short stories on the topic. It’s a pleasure to read them, the style is elegant. In addition, they provide valuable knowledge. The author reveals the principles of cooking, not content with giving a dry recipe.
He also has serious scientific works: “Tatars and Rus'”, a series on the foreign policy of our country, a detailed description of international symbols and recent history.
All that William Vasilyevich Pokhlebkin left behind were books. They can be read online or ordered by mail. His books are a wonderful gift. Treat yourself to them.
