The Ukrainian word palianytsia (паляниця) means a simple, rustic bread, commonly baked from rye, wheat, buckwheat or whatever flours are on hand, leavened usually with sourdough or yeast.  Since the Russians invaded Ukraine this year, this word became more than just a name for a bread, it became a shibboleth — a password that distinguishes Ukrainian natives from Russian invaders.   Ukrainian and Russian languages both use versions of the Cyrillic alphabet but have different vocabularies and pronunciations. Thus, Ukrainian soldiers can quickly determine whether a Russian captive is a friend or foe by asking him to pronounce the word palianytsia, which when pronounced by a Russian rather than Ukrainian, immediately identifies an enemy.

Despite its current wartime notoriety, palianytsia is a hearty, satisfying bread, one of the oldest in Ukraine’s bread-making tradition.

Ukraine is often called the “breadbasket of Europe.”  Ukraine’s rich black earth is ideal for cultivating grains and has been so for millennia.  Over centuries, Ukrainian bakers created a wide variety of distinctive breads with readily available high-quality flours.  French novelist, playwright and romanticist Honoré de Balzac, who married a Ukrainian woman and lived in Ukraine from 1847 to 1850, noted in a letter to a friend: One cannot imagine these spaces and the harvests on the land which is never fertilized, and yet which produces so much wheat every year.  And in a letter to another friend, he wrote: Perhaps one day I will be able to repay you this friendly service when you come to Ukraine, this terrestrial paradise, where I marked 77 ways of preparing bread, which fact itself suggests the idea that the people are able to manipulate even the simplest things.* 

Photograph by Oleksandr Ryzhkov

Photograph by Rustamonk

Now, Ukraine’s fertile fields that previously fed over 400 million people worldwide, are under constant Russian attack, and export of its enormous yield of food is stalled in Ukraine’s ports, blockaded by the Russian navy.

Historically, Ukrainians have a deep love and respect for bread and eat large quantities of it with meals. The urgent need to find bread, even during Russia’s shelling of Ukrainian communities, compelled many Ukrainians to leave the shelter of their homes to find an open bakery, and some were killed waiting in lines to buy bread.

Bread is a sacred object to Ukrainians.  A crumb or small piece of bread is never thrown away but given to birds or livestock.  When a piece of bread falls on the ground, a Ukrainian will pick it up, dust if off, kiss and eat it. This reverence for bread became more compelling after the 1932-1933 Holodomor, a man-made famine created by Soviet confiscation of grain when over 4 million Ukrainians starved to death.  Today, a field of grain is called bread in Ukrainian vernacular.

During its 74-year rule, the Soviet government manipulated grain, flour and yeast supplies to control its citizens and substituted private baking with state factory-produced low-quality bread, sold cheaply in state stores.  Yet, Ukrainian homemakers saved grain, milled flour and nurtured sourdough starters to bake bread whenever they could.

Mama recalled that during her childhood, every Thursday my grandmother Babunia would start the two-day bread baking process in her Ukrainian kitchen.  She would carefully take the cherished family dough bowl from the pantry, unwrap the white cloth, rehydrate a fist-size piece of dried dough leftover from previous week’s baking with some hops sourdough starter (hmeleva zakvaska), adding a little fresh flour to create the levain for the current week’s bread.  This starter would ferment overnight and be ready the next day for more flour, salt, kneading, rising, forming into loaves and baking on the brick oven hearth. Since bread was eaten at every meal and needing to feed a family of five plus two farmhands, Babunia baked 12 loaves weekly.  She baked great bread and neighbors would often “borrow” a loaf when they ran out at the end of a week, repaying the “debt” with a loaf of their own, often not as good, the following week.

Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, home and artisanal baking has experienced a renaissance.  In today’s Ukraine, traditional bread baking like Babunia’s is still practiced in rural communities. But palianytsia recipes have been simplified for city apartment dwellers without ancient dough bowls, sourdough and brick ovens.

I have adapted a common palianytsia recipe to modern baking practices. I use a combination of wheat bread and rye flours that I have on hand, a 50-50 blend of wheat and rye flours to increase gluten.  Wheat flour is better than rye flour at trapping air bubbles and lightens the texture of the loaf while maintaining rye flavor and crumb.  Other combinations of wheat and other flours may work as well.

Not having a lively sourdough starter, I used instant yeast with flat beer to replace Babunia’s hops sourdough starter.  Rather than kneading the dough in the traditional manner, I used the stretch and fold method to develop the gluten, strengthen the dough’s structure, equalize its temperature and trap air.  Fermenting the dough in the refrigerator for a few days boosts its sourdough tang.

After proofing, the dough is shaped into a round loaf, scored and baked using the cold start baking method.  Contrary to the age-old belief that dough should go into a pre-heated oven, well-risen bread dough can be started in a cold oven.  Cold start baking in a cold Dutch oven helps capture steam resulting in a crispy loaf with plenty of spring.

This five-ingredient palianytsia develops a slightly tangy, yeasty flavor with an even, open crumb and moist texture.  It’s a hearty bread.   A fresh warm slice of palianytsia is great with butter, but when it cools, it is a great vehicle for sandwiches or an accompaniment to any savory meal, especially Ukrainian borshch.

Palianytsia – Rustic Bread from Ukraine

35.27 ounces (1000 g) wheat bread flour or a mix of bread, whole wheat or rye flours, not more than the called-for total
26.1 ounces (756 g) lukewarm water or beer
2½ tablespoons (23.25 g) instant yeast
1 scant tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
Preparing dough:  Place all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with a wooden spoon until combined, spraying the dough with a few additional tablespoons of water or beer so no dry flour is visible. Cover and set aside for 15 minutes until the liquid is absorbed.

Then, with wet hands, grab one-quarter of the dough from underneath, stretching and folding over the other dough, working around the bowl.  Repeat stretching and folding six more times around the bowl, wetting hands if needed.  Transfer dough to a container with a tight lid and refrigerate overnight (or up to 7 days) to ferment. (By morning the dough will have doubled and firmed up. Each additional day of fermentation will increase the bread’s tanginess.)

Remove dough from the refrigerator in the morning and leave in the fermentation container for several hours until the dough reaches room temperature.
Then, place the dough on a lightly floured surface and repeat the stretch and fold techniques two more times with an hour in between.

Forming the dough and baking:  Prepare a large Dutch oven by lining it with a long piece of lightly greased parchment paper that reaches the top of the pot’s sides.  Remove parchment paper, place it on the counter and lightly flour its surface.

Form dough into a round loaf (boule), tucking stray dough ends underneath. Place formed loaf in the middle of the parchment.  Use the parchment ends to lift the loaf and place it into the Dutch oven. Cover pot with a lid.

Let it rise for half an hour to an hour in a warm spot until the dough barely springs back when poked with a finger.  Score the loaf with a lame or razor blade to permit bread to rise further as it bakes and cover the pot with lid.

 

Place Dutch oven with almost fully risen dough into a cold oven.  Set the oven temperature at 450˚F(232˚C).  Bake covered for 60 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 10 minutes to brown the top. (The dough will finish rising when the oven and pot reach the full temperature.)

*Ukraine In Foreign Comments And Descriptions From The VIth To XXth Century, Volodymyr Sichynsky, Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, New York, 1953.

 

Photo credits:

All other photos in this blog were taken by Slava Johnson.

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