* RYE *

The grain was an identity and a sign of a settled lifestyle that ennobled the restless spirit of the nomad. This tiny seed, hiding in its little belly the mighty and incomprehensible power of germination, has inspired poets and set the tone for the most influential philosophies. Is it not amazing? It must die, literally be buried in the ground, so its life has continued even more extensively and luxuriously. The ability of rye grain to give a few stalks (tillering) resistance to moisture and cold weather made it a favourite and necessary grain in the Russian North-West. Rye is, above all, used for bread, and there is among thousands of others a saying: "Eat cakes, take care of bread."
 Each work related to the grain, starting with planting and grinding, was almost a ritual. Generosity and disrespect of people are most clearly revealed regarding the bread. Without bread, all the labour and peasant household life becomes dull.

 Late in the autumn, after threshing happens, a careful allocation of grain is for the seeds; a bad one is for fodder and flour. A lot destined for milling right away is dried in the barn or the oven and taken to the mill.
 How pleasant it is to go to the mill. To make this trip willingly agree elderly, teenagers and children. Overnight at a water mill is remembered for a lifetime. The mill was in the peasant way of life, a place for communication, the focus of news, disputes, tales, and historical anecdotes to conclude a long and sometimes dangerous grain route. Milled, flowing from the tray, flour was warm, almost hot. You can feel with your palm skin the fruits of your labour. Even the peasant horse, returning home with a larger volume wagon after the mill merrily, snorted, catching a good mood of the owner. Flour poured into a wooden chest or was left, as they say nowadays," in a dry and dark place."
 Henceforth it was under the authority of the lady of the house. There were rye, wheat, barley, and oat flour sections in the chest. The chest stood in the basement, and it always had a wooden flour scoop. Intending to bake bread, the house lady thought first thing about a leaven, which remained from the previous bake and "lived" in a bowl all the time, covered with the old linen tablecloth. So nobody has been able to bake real rye bread from unleavened dough.

    Flour was brought into the house in a wicker basket of birch bark. The hostess was making dough in the evening with slightly heated river water. The homely rhythmic tapping of the whorls on the edge bowl, like a purring cat, or the noise of the samovar, or the creaking of the cradle, complement the feeling of family comfort and solidity. (There were times when the trough and the whorl for a year and more were no longer needed.)

      Also, today in many homes, we could hear the creaking of the cradle once in a life or not hear at all.

       The trough was tied with a cloth and placed in a warm place. Sometimes it was the hearth, and sometimes directly on the stove. The hostess would anxiously awake at night, watch if it "walks,» and stir in the morning. The dough rose while the fire was in the oven, and the hostess began rolling over. She took the bread dough with a wooden spatula, put her in a flour sprinkled round wooden bowl (also called bread bowl), and tossed the dough in the air. It rotated on the fly from side to side. Round, covered with flour dollop tumbled to clean linen cloth. The stove was swept clean with a pine broom, should be warmed up enough, but not too hot. Loaves were put from the linen upside down onto the large wooden shovel and quickly, one after the other, thrust into the heat. Six to eight loaves were sitting in the hearth of the closed oven as long as needed.


 A surprising, not like anything, the smell of baked dough appears in the house and on the street. For this smell came once a guy called Kolyaka, deciding to tease a baker lady (true story): «Auntie, what are you doing? Bake or what? - Bake. - We also bake over there". A word for word, the guy, talked about a mountain with a woman.
 When the conversation is about, seemed to dry up, he tossed a new theme: - And now a cow of my godmother wanted to calve early, but changed her mind. - Do not lie! It's not a human; it is a cow." Standing in the middle of the house, the woman began to talk about her cow and then switched to something else, then to the third story. She loved to talk. She stopped bubbling only when a blue smoke went around the house. She clasped her hands. - "Goblin, you are a goblin, Kolka; I have seven loaves in the oven!"
 She got rushed to save them. The loaves were black as the iron kettles. The trace of Kolka was already cold... Burned bread is not better than under-baked, but at least half-baked rolls were good for the cattle. So a loaf of bread was always on the table, along with the bread knife and the salt shaker.


 Children could take a piece of bread at any time; the adults had to comply with the meals schedule. The bread was always cut at the table by the master. Beggars would get a piece of bread of average size, and when the table was empty, it was said: "God will provide."

      Ironically, sometimes the bread was baked from the rye's satellite weed - fireweed, it saved people from starvation. At the time of the disaster, the symbol of which was the rye croutons, to the trough could be added anything: dried potatoes, bone meal, sawdust, crushed straw. A failure, that is, either non-risen or over-leavened bread, lies on the lady of the house as a disgrace, and she always lamented.

 A loaf of non-risen bread would settle down, and the lower crust was hard and dense. Over-leavened bread would cause heartburn. On the other hand, nothing was tastier than salted rye bread (the dough was usually not salted) with clean water after hard labour. And it was watered down with milk and yogurt. The cracker cake was made from crushed rye crackers in lean times." Tyurya," or "mura," pureed rye bread dish had some respect, unless, of course, there was something else to eat. A recipe for «tyurya» is the simplest: boiling water poured into a cup, place crumbled bread, then onions, adding flax seed oil and salt.


 Kvas was also made from bread crusts or crackers, but it was not the primary method of kvas preparation.

 "Mother Rye feeds all around." Not only fed but gave drink as well, we have the right to add. Before the war, beer in the North was the main festive drink among peasants. It was made from rye. Anfisa Ivanovna told me about this: "The nineteenth of December and the old style of the sixth was the feast of St. Nikola, the patron of our parish. We have to schedule the wedding to St. Nichola to be the same expense. It is 1926, there were no formal weddings, but if there were a church during Lent, the priest still would not marry.


 The holiday was awaited by all, from little ones to the elderly. Even the beggars were longing for holidays. So many people would visit; homemakers baked pies, especially for the poor. Mash was left, not first-round liquor, though, but a second-round distillation for greeting strangers.

      Rye for beer was chosen only very good, quickly fermented; people made pooling of three or four houses, an average of 50 pounds for 40 gallons barrel. Who had rye not so good, had to bring some more. The women will be ordered to bring fresh river water to stay at room temperature and scatter the grain there. This was the winter way of making beer.
 And in the summer, it was put directly into bags and the bags into the river, with stones on them, so they do not float. Rye grain swells in the stream longer than in the barrels, about three days; at home, the grain swells much faster. So the bags should be turned; rye is stirred with a spatula in barrels. The swollen grain is taken out and levelled down in a thin layer on a white floor. The grain sprouts in four or five days, sometimes in a week, it is sprayed with water but is not turned. When the shoots become large and grow together as a seedling, they will be thrashed, rubbed, splashed with water using a new broom and put back in bags. The bags with rye will be put and malt for four or five days on the floor.


 When a whiff of malt appears, the bags are pulled to the barn to dry. You cannot dry a lot of malt in the oven; it can go sour. And if you give it away to people to dry in their homes, it will become different; some will not dry it thoroughly, some will make it over dry. Malt is kiln dried in a half-day; particular firewood for this is chosen. Brew makers now and then stir malt, but do not dry it completely; they say: it will dry later. Shove malt from the barn, sift it, and it has to be ground with small millstones ..."


 The preparation of malt required twelve or thirteen days; boiling wort took one and a half days, a beer in the cold "walked around" up to two days. Consequently, the whole process of making beer lasted at least two weeks and sixteen or seventeen days in the winter. In the early days of Philip's Fast, guys from the Sohotskaya parish began to visit each other to figure out how many guests they would host and how much rye they would use. Each village had one or two meticulous brewers. Others knew how to brew, but not all dare: too great responsibility for the collective malt. There were times when all the brew, hundreds of pounds of choice of rye grain went up in smoke, instead, was going into the garbage to feed the cattle, and half the village remained for a holiday without beer and wort.


 Once, two men in Timonikha village ventured to brew separately. They spoiled everything. A local poet, without hesitation, immediately came up with a long song about them. Thus, to brew beer unanimously was trusted by the most experienced people. Anyone whose life was even slightly touched with the pre-war Northern Russian village, probably forever keep in the memory feeling of the cold night, crack frost logs, the smell of fire, red sparks and blue starry sky. brewing in the lane does not let people sleep; many people even get up in the middle of the night, hurriedly dressed and ran to look. Before dawn, when it becomes darker, on the snow and the walls of houses flashed past large shadows, the fire-pit set up very close to the building already thaw ice crust in the snow.


 Large barn chocks burn in the round hole of snow, the saw-horse stands over the fire pit, on the saw-horse hangs a large cast-iron boiler. The boiler gives up the powerful steam; under it, there are heated red-hot boulders and stones in flames. Nobody is allowed to enter into the darkness of the open gates, but it is possible to slip quietly and see the enormous kettle. The kettle sits on two massive logs; beneath it is a big wooden block. The pot is covered with clean bedding and coats. The dim light of homemade lanterns illuminates concerned, solemnly-important elders. - "Shoo."


 Kids like bullets fly out into the street. Meanwhile, in silence, with a strange sort of importance, people prepare clean containers treated with boiling water: tubs, buckets. They also treat with boiling water wooden tongs for getting out stones, large and small ladles. In the mid of the barrel bottom, there is a small square hole, tightly shut up with a long stick. The barrel was first heated with boiling water, and after that, chilled water was let out. Then poured all course-ground, as if crushed malt, suppressed it, gradually filled with clean, hot water. Then began the actual brewing - the most critical and crucial moment. The brewers could expect a disgraceful danger of not getting out of malt. If malt was over dried, wort could not settle, and everything was ruined. The first portion of water, the second... Hot stones with a hiss were immersed into the barrel. Sometimes they are stacked in a purse with handles woven of twisted birch twigs. Loaded with hot stones, this purse was lowered into the barrel; it hangs there on the crossbar, warming the content.


 Meanwhile, the latticed chamber is made of thin strips of spruce; its height is equal to the size of the barrel. Straw cut according to the chamber length filled the gaps between the planks, was sewed with thread, the lower ends of the twisted outward fan-like fashion. This kind of filter is carefully placed over the probe. When the wort is brewed and finally settled down, the chief brewer solemnly declared: "We let it out now." Crossed themselves, threw insulation aside and started gently shaking the probe. And this is the first jet of hot, fragrant mash that hits the wooden through. First, they try it from the spoon, all in a row, starting with the elderly. Then it hastily poured into the wooden bucket and cooled. Later after the first wort, it began to boil the second round. In the morning, the first thing women, the elderly and children were treated with was wort.


 It was the tastiest, healthy, most honourable non-alcoholic drink. Anfisa Ivanovna says that after dividing the wort: "Who gets a bucket, some get two buckets," into a great remainder put hops with the proportion of two pounds per 32 pounds of rye. First, the wort is boiled with hops. Then it is cooled, poured into barrels, and prepared "chalk" (a substitute for yeast) of the same hops and wort. Then it ran into the shake all the content and waiting to ferment in the cold.


 Anfisa Ivanovna continued: "It is desirable to ferment when it is quite cold, but if it can don't "walk," then a hot stone dipped briefly to slightly warm. Usually, it doesn't ferment completely; it would be put away into containers just before the end. Hop-pomace was too divided, dried in the summer, freezing in winter. Women made them "chalk" (yeast) for pies. And to speed up fermentation, people would dance around it to make it a festive drink.


 Sometimes, beer comes out too weak, it gives off hops too firm, and visiting guys would not drink. Too watery, they would say.

 The brewer hates this: "But I have brewed it thoroughly! And you brewed for St. Nicolas brew that smells malt." Good beer holds a handkerchief and looks beautiful, and the drink is tasty and effervescent and thickly. And about the good wort say: "You can almost bite it. Out 64 pounds of rye would come out along with the second-round of malt five or six buckets of wort.


 Approximately two-thirds were used for beer, one-third for festive drinking for teenagers, children and the elderly. (The women and older bachelors in holidays were allowed to drink beer.) With the cup of wort were greeted relatives, welcomed guests. Beggars and strangers during the feast were welcomed at the door with glasses and mugs of wort. An everyday drink was considered kvas, brewed in boiled river water from the pelts, that is, from the burned malt.


 Thus, bread and malt are the two major "engines," without which is unthinkable peasant life, were driven by the Mother Rye. From the rye flour were baked «klatches» (padlock-shaped pretzels) forms when there was no bread and kids were hungry. The dough is very thickly kneaded on the water, stretched into a long roll, bent from it the rolls, rolled balls and thrust into the oven. The hostess was making the same dough with the rolling pin-dense cakes. If you hang this moist cake on the end of the grasp and put it into the fiery oven, it almost immediately blows up from both sides. You created a delicious crusty bubble.


 In the morning, in haste, women often cooked cereal-brewed kasha using the ability of rye flour to malt, become soft, sticky. This thick porridge was eaten with milk, yogurt and grilled in the oven crème- fraise.


 With large thin rye crepes, made fifteen or twenty, were prepared potato "rogulki." Diluted with milk, crushed potatoes evenly spread on the pancakes, folded and pinched the edge, then doused with sour cream, sprinkled with flour and thrust into the hot oven. The hostess tried to bake them for all tastes. Someone in the family liked rolls thin and soft; others liked them dry, the third preferred thicker. ..

 Similar "rogulki" often were baked using cottage cheese (for some reason called "thick"), a tenderized reminiscent of Salamat cereals from pea and barley mix.

 Often the crepes were folded with the stuffing, and it steamed inside, singling out the juice. In this way were baked, for example, "sicheniki." Finely chopped rutabaga, turnip at the worst, the hostess puts it into the crepes, bakes and tightly closes the oven for an hour to have them thoroughly steamed. Anointed with butter for beauty, they are delicious. Similarly, they were baked in crepes, cut potatoes and boiled peas.


 The diligent cooks had such items in a shape of an exact copy of the crescent, while by the incapable ones, they resembled fish. If they have not kept in hand, collapsed, the hostess lost much in the eyes of the household. But she mainly worried when the pies came out bad.