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.

A year ago, as a birthday gift, I received a huge book by V.V. Pokhlebkina. She lay there and waited in the wings, waiting for the moment when I was ripe to gain deeper knowledge of culinary processes. Now it’s interesting not just to cook, but to understand what I’m doing, why and why. And I want to do it not just according to the recipe, but with understanding, myself. Pokhlebkin is a classic. Moreover, he writes in such a way that you read it like a work of art, and I personally understand everything the first time. I want to share the knowledge I have acquired with you, maybe someone will discover something new, or maybe look at familiar things from a new perspective.

Yeast

Yeast must always be fresh. If they are stale, you can try to refresh them: grind them in a spoonful of warm water and add a teaspoon of sugar. If after 10 minutes they begin to bubble, it means they have come to life. Select dark, non-living pieces and discard. But it is better to use fresh yeast for all bread products. Renewed yeast should be taken almost twice as much as fresh. For one kilogram of flour and other dough components, you need to take at least 35 and no more than 50 grams of yeast, that is, a third or half a pack, depending on their quality. Yeast can be replaced with beer (half a glass) or sour cream (glass). However, substitutes are not added directly to the dough like yeast. Instead, a sourdough dough is first prepared from them: beer or sour cream must be mixed with a small amount of flour into a paste, add a teaspoon of granulated sugar, cover and leave in a warm place for the mixture to ferment. If fermentation and accompanying swelling do not occur (which may be due to the death or absence of living fungi in the beer), such a “sourdough” will not be able to replace yeast.

Liquid
The liquid for kneading any dough must necessarily consist of at least half a glass of water - for diluting the yeast. The rest of the liquid can consist of water, milk, sour cream, whey, buttermilk, kefir, mixed in any proportions and taken in any quantities.

Fats
Absolutely any fats of animal and vegetable origin can be used in a bread product. Sunflower oil is best, as well as butter, lamb fat, pork and beef lard. If the fats are solid, then they must be melted and turned into liquid before adding them to the dough. Fats, like liquids, can be mixed together in any proportions and these combinations can be used in a bread product. You have a spoonful of sunflower oil, a small piece, 20 grams, butter and a little chicken fat lining the abdominal cavity - all this can be mixed, all this is good for baking a kilogram of bread. You just need to melt everything and mix it together before adding it to the dough.
People reflected this ability of bread products to help utilize all the remnants of not only fats, but also other related products (small additions of cheese, cottage cheese, previously turned into powder, grated, into the dough) in the well-known proverb: you can wrap everything in bread and in a pie .

First operation.
First, a mixture of yeast, liquids and all additional components is always created (all components are diluted, including fats and eggs, if the latter are provided for in a recipe).
After it has been created, some small additions of soluble or insoluble dry ingredients, for example, salt, spices (pepper, onion, cumin, coriander, anise), can be added to this liquid mixture. You just need to make sure that they are evenly distributed in the dough.

The second and decisive operation: preparing the dough.
Flour is added to the combined liquid mixture - as much as is needed for a dough that does not stick to your hands. Therefore, the flour is added gradually, and the dough is kneaded all the time. It is best if this is done continuously: add flour with one hand, and knead the dough with the other (with a spoon) in a circular motion clockwise. To make this easier, the dough should always be kneaded in a deep, stable bowl. That is why previously a sauerkraut was used for this purpose - a cylindrical, heavy wooden bucket slightly expanding at the bottom. Now the most convenient utensil may be a deep cylindrical enamel bowl (not a saucepan).
The amount of flour is never determined in advance when preparing flour (bread) products, because everything depends on the amount of liquid mixture obtained; what is its specific composition and how much flour can this mixture absorb. If you determine the amount of flour in advance, then it is almost never possible to accurately adjust the liquid to it, because this value is variable and subject to fluctuations. Various fat contents, milk density, water hardness, egg size, butter and fat consistency, as well as the freshness of the yeast and their effect on the liquid part also influence this. Therefore, do not have much confidence in a recipe that “precisely” determines the amount of flour for bread dough. As a rule, it does not make it possible to obtain a quality product, despite all our efforts. It is important to do something else - strictly observe the proportions, not go beyond certain ratios:

1. All dry additives, insoluble: onions, cheese, cottage cheese, spices together should not exceed half a glass in volume for every two glasses of liquid in the dough. Otherwise, it will be difficult for the dough to rise well.
2. Fats and oils should not exceed half a glass for each glass of liquid (water, milk), otherwise the dough will be dry and thin.
3. Eggs should not be added to bread dough at all, as they make the dough brittle and tough.
Therefore, eggs are mainly a part of confectionery dough, which has different laws.
4. Milk makes the dough fluffier, softer, gives it elasticity and firmness. But it should not be overused, it should always be less than water, or half with water, otherwise the dough will be difficult to bake. Milk bread should always be made in small sizes; the smaller the milk bun, the easier it is to bake.

A bread product differs from a confectionery product not in that one is sweet and the other is not. This is a consumer definition. The culinary definition is based on the role that flour plays in a given product. If flour is the main component, if there is more of it (by weight, volume) than all other components, then the product is bread. If flour makes up less than half of all other components (butter, eggs, sugar, various additives), then the product is a confectionery product.

And I also want to show you a simple but very tasty dish that I found on the pages of his book. I have already shown you what can be made from turnips, and now I will introduce you to rutabaga, the turnip’s closest relative. Everything is so simple that it couldn’t be simpler, but how delicious! Rutabaga is not just baked, but steamed in an oven, in this case in the oven, and in this form is called parenki. Because of this cooking method, it turns out very dry, with a special pleasant taste. And served with berries. In general, here it is.

Rutabaga patties with cranberries

1 cup cranberries (you can use lingonberries)
0.5-1 cups grated rutabaga (you can also make turnips)
3-4 tbsp. honey

We thoroughly clean the vegetables, peel them, cut large tubers into 3-4 pieces, place them tightly in a cast iron or pot (I used a ceramic pot). We tightly plug the hole on top with hay (I used alder shavings), turn the pot upside down onto a baking sheet covered with paper, put it in the oven, preheated to 200 C. All this should simmer for 35-50 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces. Hot parenki can be served as a separate dish with butter and salt or as a side dish for meat. And as a dessert, as I do, the parenki are cooled and grated on a fine grater (or crushed in a blender into a not very liquid puree). I brought the cranberries, which are large, to a boil with honey (or sugar), boiled for 1 minute and mashed with a spoon so that the mass was uneven.

I really liked the slight sourness, with the overall prevailing berry sweetness. The taste of rutabaga is very unobtrusive, there are just a lot of benefits. It turns out that such forgotten dishes are quite worthy of attention.

Well, here, in fact, is the rutabaga itself, if someone is not familiar with it.

Yes, there is a lot of information, I hope it is useful and not boring :)

“Bread is the head of everything.” Or, as the Ukrainians say, “bread above us, panue.” It is clear from this that the choice of bread for the menu is an extremely important matter that cannot be neglected. Moreover, in all cases of shortage of any products, they can be compensated by eating bread, which is very correctly noted by the people: “The stomach cannot survive without bread.” Meanwhile, few people choose bread specifically, and even fewer people who adapt bread to the rest of the menu. They usually take what they are used to, what is available in the nearest store, bakery, or what they consider “better”, that is, whiter, fluffier, softer. But you need to choose what best suits your menu, what is in better harmony with the nutritional composition of the dishes at your lunch or table.

Thus, you should not eat black bread with pressed caviar or with stewed lamb, because it will only distort, simplify, and worsen the taste of these wonderful and valuable products. In the same way, it is illiterate from a culinary point of view to serve white bread with pickles or herring with green onions, because only black bread can truly highlight the taste of these spicy dishes, softening but not distorting their peculiar sharpness and piquancy.

As a child, I was lucky enough to live in a village where every morning they baked fresh rye (rheat) bread - huge round loaves in a Russian oven. So I became accustomed to good, high-quality bread and have maintained this commitment forever. Since then, black rye bread has been a must for me. But its quality has changed greatly over the past decades. Nowadays I take the following types of black bread: “Rye”, “Sayansky”, and until 1990 I loved “Tartu” bread baked in Estonia. At one time I also bought Borodinsky, until it spoiled due to a sudden change in the recipe. Now, in the 90s, this bread has become completely bad. Due to the fact that black bread has become worse everywhere, I recently switched (in 1996-1998) to making homemade rye flatbreads from rye flour (without the addition of other types of flour or half and half with wheat) with pressed yeast.

When there is no yeast, I bake thin unleavened “sheets” of pure rye flour with the addition of sunflower oil and onions. I like. Very tasty and quick: knead for 5-6 minutes and bake for 15 minutes over low heat. Total - in 20-30 minutes fresh, hot, tasty “bread”. Or rather, dry “bread”, plates of black bread. It can be used mainly for soups. Very suitable both in taste and consistency. Shchi and borscht with such “bread” are an irreplaceable pleasure.

For snack dishes - herring, sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers and mushrooms, as well as any salted and smoked fish - “hard” bread is not suitable. For this you need rye flatbreads, they are soft. That is why, depending on the overall menu, and primarily on the nature of soups and appetizers, I change the type of black bread.

There are also problems with white bread. I used to love rolls. Then they disappeared in the 70s, reappeared in the 80s, then disappeared again and have now been transformed into bread that does not look like kalachny. The peculiarity of their dough has disappeared, since manual processing has disappeared, and machine dough gives a different taste when baked. Thus, both kalachi and sitniki disappeared. For white bread, I now use only Armenian lavash (thin, sheet, i.e. lavash), as well as another Caucasian bread that is incorrectly called “lavash” in our country - Georgian “madauri”, relatively small flatbreads in a regular plate, and “tonispuri” - large, thick flatbreads, as well as “churek”, very similar to “tonispuri”, but slightly smaller in size. All these types of bread are good quality, and they can (and should!) be bought hot if they are made in small hand-made bakeries at Moscow markets. In large stores in the city center, unfortunately, you almost always find only counterfeits of these types of bread, made from a different dough and by machine. In addition to Caucasian types of white bread, I also buy grain bread (formerly “Graham”, then “Zdorovye”) when it occasionally appears. But now I no longer buy such previously quite good-quality types of bread as “Doctorsky” and “Otrubnoy”, because their recipes have undergone changes for the worse. When I have time and opportunity, I try to bake homemade types of bread, that is, those flatbreads that were mentioned in the first part.

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, this was (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.

"Shell with a pearl"

Someday I will write a long article about William Pokhlebkin - a great historian and a great cook. By the way, “Pokhlebkin” is his real name. Or maybe I won’t write an article. I will introduce you to his books, so you yourself will become interested and find information about him on the Internet. I believe that one of the goals of creating this site is to provide “food for thought,” but then think, decide, find out for yourself.
I baked these buns this morning (and not for the first time), so I’ll tell you about the pitfalls of this recipe.
So. V.V. Pokhlebkin “Secrets of good cuisine”:

“But in a healthy, hard-working family they baked bread almost every day, two or three times a week, so that they would always have it fresh. Nowadays, with modern home appliances - a gas or electric 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. To quickly bake bread dough in 8-10 minutes, you need to give it the shape of a flat cake or a small bun the size of a fist; 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 bar), 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 a glass of water or milk (whatever you have on hand) and about a quarter to a third of a glass of sunflower oil, mix everything quickly but thoroughly, 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, which means that you need to add flour gradually until it, while still very soft and tender, at the same time completely lags behind your 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 look like stripes.
Let the bread sit for 2-3 minutes before putting it in the oven, or put it in the oven right away, because it will be hot in the kitchen by this time. 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 sit 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. It all took no more than 20 minutes, including the section. 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. How's it going? Tasty? And how! And it’s not difficult at all. It’s just downright nonsense.”

M Some comments based on personal experience:

1. Yeast. We remember and write down: “As a rule, a pack of dry yeast (11g) corresponds to 50g of regular yeast”
2. We just cut the onion, after baking you won’t find it in the buns. But what a wonderful aroma the onion gives to the dough!
3. Sunflower oil should be added after you have mixed all the liquid ingredients, added a little flour, and kneaded the batter. Let all the ingredients “grab” and react with each other, and then add the oil. This is the rule for all types of yeast dough!
4. I believe that you need to add sugar, at least one tablespoon, otherwise the buns will not brown and they will turn out “bad” or whitish.
5. This point is VERY important: “The main thing is that the dough does not turn out too hard, which means you need to add flour gradually, until it, while still very soft and tender, at the same time completely lags behind your hands.”
6. And BE SURE to let the buns rest for “25 minutes” (Not 20, not 30 minutes, but “25” writes Pokhlebkin, that’s what a meticulous person he was). Today I hurried to serve them on the table, and in the middle they were doughy, although they rested under my plastic bag and towel for about 10 minutes. And by dinner they were simply delicious.