"To love your people, you must first get to know them." And we seem to have forgotten the customs, traditions and food of the Bulgarians of old. Native way of life and culture have always been a reflection of the creative impulse of our people. When we talk about way of life and culture, we cannot miss food and its social and ritual role in the lives of our ancestors.
Although information about the food of the Thracians, Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians is scarce, there is some. From Xenophon and Demosthenes we know that the Thracians used wheat, rye and millet for food, from which they made large leavened breads. The Slavs ate plant foods and legumes and rarely put meat on their table. The main food of the Proto-Bulgarians was meat and milk. Under the influence of the settled Slavs, the Proto-Bulgarians began to engage in agriculture and included bread and flour porridges in their menu. Gradually, the difference in the way of eating of the three groups disappears and it is believed that around the 10th century there was already a unified Bulgarian food.
Many Byzantine chronicles from this period mention that the main food of the Bulgarians was bread. The chronicles of the Crusaders testify to the high consumption of dairy products – cheese, butter, milk.
The food of the old Bulgarians
Bulgarians from ancient times mainly ate plant-based foods and followed the seasons.
When spring came, they gathered sorrel, dock, lovage, styrofoam, nettles, and other "weeds" from which they made porridge, and the larger leaves were used to wrap up sarmi. In the summer and fall, they gathered dogwoods, pears, prunes, wild grapes, and other fruits and dried them for the winter. In infertile years, people even ground acorns into flour.
All kinds of vegetables were eaten, and tomatoes were eaten green, because people believed that when they turned red they became poisonous. They prepared various pickles for the winter, and as soon as the frost fell, the aroma of sauerkraut wafted from every house. Of the legumes, beans with lots of mint and lentils with garlic were the most commonly prepared. In the Rhodope Mountains, beans were mixed with corn, rice, cabbage, and others.
Fresh milk (presnak) was used for various dishes – with rice, bulgur, trienitsa, noodles, etc. Fermented milk was prepared with sourdough from the previous yogurt. In the absence of sourdough, shepherds put the milk in an old clay yogurt pot, others used formic acid. Butter and white cheese were, as they are to this day, revered. After the butter was churned, the remaining buttermilk was boiled to make cottage cheese or curdled.
Meat, like any other food, is also seasonal and every part of the animal was used. Most of the animal was preserved – the bacon was arranged in patties and salted, the stomach was stuffed with lightly salted boiled pork for suzdrma, and the intestines were used to make sausage and blood sausage.
The bread
"The staple food of Bulgarians until the second half of the 20th century was bread. Bread for daily consumption was always sour, that is, with leaven. It was kneaded in a long trough carved from a whole tree, called nostvi. The bread kneaded with lukewarm water was left to rise (to rise), then it was broken (mixed) into individual loaves – samun, kvasnik, peshnik, furnik. It was left to rise once more and baked in a clay pot, covered with a lid, directly in the ashes or in an oven.
~from "Ethnography of Bulgaria", Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
As early as 1553, Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq described how unleavened bread was prepared in our lands. "The women immediately mix the flour leavened with water, put it in hot ashes and offer it for sale. The dough is thick, and the pita is spread out with a thickness of about 2-3 centimeters and placed in a clay tray or in the oven for baking."
In different parts of Bulgaria, bread was made from grain, which was abundant. In Thrace, Dobrudja and the outskirts of the Danube from wheat flour, in the mountainous regions from rye. In the Rhodope Mountains, bread was made from corn, along with the cobs. From the mountain of Orpheus,
In Rila and Pirin, boiled potatoes were also added to the bread. In Dobrudja, kvass was prepared with wild hops.
The entire cycle of bread making is loaded with certain meanings. Bread is at the heart of every rite and this peculiar cult is an expression of "man's dependence on nature, on the bread-producing field". It accompanies the Bulgarian from the cradle, through the wedding, to his last hour.
But we will talk more about the ritual significance of bread very soon.
Given the important role of bread in Bulgarian culture, it is only natural that we at Sharena Kuhnya decided to give it the attention it deserves. That is why, along with French culinary classes, they will also be holding master classes on making kvass bread. And not only that.
