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Culinary cultures of Europe: Russia 3
Feb. 4th, 2006 02:10 pmRussian Federation in the 21st century – what next?
In the beginning of perestroika - official name (‘rebuilding’) for the reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 - (the ruling slogan was: perestroika, uskorenie ‘speeding-up’, gospriemka ‘state check’) the following anecdote was very popular. Somebody is asking the man selling bubliki (circle bread of bretzel dough, boiled and baked, sprinkled liberally with poppy-seed, cousin of bagel but with quite a big hole in the middle):
Why are your bubliki underdone? — That’s speeding up!
Why has every single bublik a piece bitten off? — That’s state check!
Why are your bubliki square instead of round? — That’s perestroika!
In fact everything did speed up and change amazingly in just a few years. Incidentally true bubliki have disappeared together with the famous kalachi, saiki, sitniki, krendeli and many other unique breads and buns that had such popularity in Russia before the revolution and were inherited by the baking factories of the Soviet Union. As for the basic Russian bread, wheat bread has generally become more light and fluffy but has retained its characteristic touch of sweetness, and rye bread has lost much of its previous sourness. In Moscow due to mass immigration from ex-Soviet republics various Caucasian and Asian flatbreads (of Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan and so on, all those breads that the Russians of the 19th century look down at) are steadily becoming more popular, together with Arab pita bread. They lie on the supermarket shelves beside German-style multigrain bread, French-style croissants and baguettes, English-style toast bread ( Read more... )
In the beginning of perestroika - official name (‘rebuilding’) for the reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 - (the ruling slogan was: perestroika, uskorenie ‘speeding-up’, gospriemka ‘state check’) the following anecdote was very popular. Somebody is asking the man selling bubliki (circle bread of bretzel dough, boiled and baked, sprinkled liberally with poppy-seed, cousin of bagel but with quite a big hole in the middle):
Why are your bubliki underdone? — That’s speeding up!
Why has every single bublik a piece bitten off? — That’s state check!
Why are your bubliki square instead of round? — That’s perestroika!
In fact everything did speed up and change amazingly in just a few years. Incidentally true bubliki have disappeared together with the famous kalachi, saiki, sitniki, krendeli and many other unique breads and buns that had such popularity in Russia before the revolution and were inherited by the baking factories of the Soviet Union. As for the basic Russian bread, wheat bread has generally become more light and fluffy but has retained its characteristic touch of sweetness, and rye bread has lost much of its previous sourness. In Moscow due to mass immigration from ex-Soviet republics various Caucasian and Asian flatbreads (of Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan and so on, all those breads that the Russians of the 19th century look down at) are steadily becoming more popular, together with Arab pita bread. They lie on the supermarket shelves beside German-style multigrain bread, French-style croissants and baguettes, English-style toast bread ( Read more... )
