Borodinsky bread ( ''borodinskiy khleb'') or borodino bread is a dark brown

sourdough Sourdough is a type of bread that uses the fermentation by naturally occurring yeast and lactobacillus bacteria to raise the dough. In addition to leavening the bread, the fermentation process produces lactic acid, which gives the bread its dis ...

rye bread of

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n origin, traditionally sweetened with

molasses Molasses () is a viscous byproduct, principally obtained from the refining of sugarcane or sugar beet juice into sugar. Molasses varies in the amount of sugar, the method of extraction, and the age of the plant. Sugarcane molasses is usuall ...

and flavored with

coriander Coriander (), whose leaves are known as cilantro () in the U.S. and parts of Canada, and dhania in parts of South Asia and Africa, is an annual plant, annual herb (''Coriandrum sativum'') in the family Apiaceae. Most people perceive the ...

and

caraway Caraway, also known as meridian fennel and Persian cumin (''Carum carvi''), is a biennial plant in the family Apiaceae, native to western Asia, Europe, and North Africa. Etymology The etymology of "caraway" is unclear. Caraway has been ...

seeds.

Preparation

Borodinsky bread has been traditionally made (with the definite recipe fixed by a ГОСТ 5309-50 standard) from a mixture of no less than 80% by weight of a

whole-grain A whole grain is a grain of any cereal and pseudocereal that contains the endosperm, germ, and bran, in contrast to refined grains, which retain only the endosperm. As part of a general healthy diet, consumption of whole grains is associated wit ...

rye Rye (''Secale cereale'') is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is grown principally in an area from Eastern and Northern Europe into Russia. It is much more tolerant of cold weather and poor soil than o ...

flour Flour is a powder made by Mill (grinding), grinding raw grains, List of root vegetables, roots, beans, Nut (fruit), nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredie ...

with about 15% of a second-grade

wheat flour Wheat flour is a powder made from the grinding of common wheat used for human consumption. Wheat varieties are called "soft" or "weak" if gluten content is low, and are called "hard" or "strong" if they have high gluten content. Hard flour, or ...

and about 5% of rye, or rarely, barley

malt Malt is any cereal grain that has been made to germinate by soaking in water and then stopped from germinating further by drying with hot air, a process known as "malting". Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, malted milk, malt vinegar, ...

, often leavened by a separately prepared starter culture made like a

choux pastry Choux pastry, or (), is a delicate pastry dough used in many pastries. The essential ingredients are butter, water, flour and eggs. Instead of a raising agent, choux pastry employs its high moisture content to create steam, as the water in ...

, by diluting the flour by a near-boiling (95-96 °C) water, and adding the yeast after cooling the mix to 65-67 °C, but then mostly inoculated by the previous batches of dough instead of the dry yeast. It is then sweetened and colored with

beet sugar Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula . For human consumption, sucrose is extracted and refined ...

, and flavored with salt and spices, of which the coriander seed is required, and caraway is optional, but still quite popular. Modern recipes are often 100% whole rye. A Borodinsky variety called ”supreme” consists of 100% rye (85% whole rye and 15% white rye flour) exists according to a pre-GOST recipe found in P.M. Plotnikov & M.F. Kolesnikov's 1940 book ''350 Varieties of Bread''.

Legend of origin

Several legends exist regarding the

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

. The most popular one states that this bread traces its name to Margarita Tuchkova, a widow of

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

general Alexander Tuchkov, who perished at

Battle of Borodino The Battle of Borodino ( ) or Battle of Moscow (), in popular literature also known as the Battle of the Generals, took place on the outskirts of Moscow near the village of Borodino on 7 September 1812 during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. ...

. His widow established a

convent A convent is an enclosed community of monks, nuns, friars or religious sisters. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican ...

at a former battlefield, of which she eventually became an

abbess An abbess (Latin: ''abbatissa'') is the female superior of a community of nuns in an abbey. Description In the Catholic Church (both the Latin Church and Eastern Catholic), Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Lutheran and Anglican abbeys, the mod ...

, and its nuns had reportedly come up with the bread's recipe to serve at mourning events, thus, a dark, solemn color, and with round coriander seeds representing a deadly

grapeshot In artillery, a grapeshot is a type of ammunition that consists of a collection of smaller-caliber round shots packed tightly in a canvas bag and separated from the gunpowder charge by a metal wadding, rather than being a single solid projectile ...

. Another legend that also ties it to the Battle of Borodino mentions a food trailer containing caraway and rye flour that got blasted by a cannon, forcing the locals to recover the ingredients and use them together for the first time. A third version states that composer and chemist

Alexander Borodin Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (12 November 183327 February 1887) was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as " The Five", a group dedicated to prod ...

brought the idea for the bread to Moscow from

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

where he got interested in local baking. Since rye was not widely cultivated in Southern Europe, this is the most easily dismissed version. No sources support these legends, and the name of this bread most probably first appeared after the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

(1917), as no mention of this name was made before 1920. In fact, the modern recipe did not appear in print before 1933, first in internal memos of a Moscow baking plant. However, in the literature of breadbaking of the end of 19th century, a number of similar recipes exist, though caraway seeds were usually used instead of coriander.

References

External links

GOST 5309-50 standard document (in Russian)
Rye breads Russian cuisine Yeast breads Sourdough breads Molasses {{bread-stub

Preparation

Legend of origin

See also

References

External links