Introduction

Pies in Russia began to bake a very long time ago. Pies were prepared and consumed in Russia at first exclusively on holidays.

The pie replaced a full meal - the fillings were very diverse: meat and fish, vegetables and fruits, mushrooms and cereals, berries, herbs and eggs. They took pies with them on the road, to arable land, in the field.

Russian cuisine knows a lot of recipes for a variety of pies, baked and fried. They differ in the composition and method of preparing the dough (yeast, puff, unleavened, etc.), in appearance (open, closed, small and large, round and square, etc.), in fillings (with meat, fish, mushrooms , berries, vegetables, cereals, cottage cheese). All the features of Russian pies cannot be listed. Each locality has its own rules, its own traditions and its own secrets.

Pies occupy a prominent and, moreover, always a place of honor on the Russian table. These truly national products have come down to us from ancient times, avoiding any kind of foreign influence. In Russia, a pie is a symbol of homeliness, comfort, the smell of pies meant a settled home and a friendly family.

In a classic national Russian dinner, pies always come after fish, a fish dish, so they are followed by another second - roast or porridge; in a simpler Russian dinner, they follow either immediately after the soup or after the second course.

1. The history of pies in Russia

The very word "pie", derived from the old Russian word "feast", indicates that not a single solemn feast could do without pies. At the same time, each festival corresponded to a special type of pies, hence the variety of Russian pies, both in appearance and in dough, fillings and taste.

The mention of pies is found in the ancient book of the traveler Adam Olearius, who said: “By the way, they (Russians) have a special kind of biscuit, like pate, or rather pfapkuchene, which they call “pie”; these pies are the size of a wedge of butter, but somewhat larger and oblong. They give them a stuffing of finely chopped fish or meat and onions and bake them in cow's oil, and in fasting in vegetable oil; their taste is not without pleasantness. Each one of them treats his guest with this dish, if he means to receive it well.

Of course, from this meager description it is difficult to get a complete picture of what kind of pies our ancestors baked, exactly how they were prepared and how they were served. Olearius described far from all varieties of pies, which in Ancient Russia there were countless.

Russian ritual dishes are inconceivable without pies. Especially if we are talking about family holidays and rites. No birthday table, for example, was complete without cabbage pie. And on Epiphany holidays they baked pies-crosses from sour dough. Some housewives put a coin or a button in them “for good luck”. Funeral dinners also ended with a pie, when it was taken out of the house of the deceased on a large dish surrounded by candles and distributed to passers-by and beggars on the street.

Once Ivan the Terrible arranged a sumptuous feast for his brethren of 700 guardsmen. The king's servants in velvet caftans brought one dish after another. It is known that after numerous appetizers in the form of pickles, fried swans and peacocks, there was a huge variety of baked goods on the table, among which were kulebyaks, kurniki, pies with meat and cheese, pancakes of all possible kinds, crooked pies and pancakes.

Special traditions relate to pies that were baked on name days. On the name day, it was customary to bake pies as sweet stuffing, and with salt and send them to relatives and friends as a kind of invitation to the holiday. They sent exactly as many pies as they planned to invite guests. The one who brought the pies put them on the table with the words: "The birthday boy ordered to bow to the pies and asked for bread to eat." Godfather and mothers used to send sweet cakes as a token of special respect. In some Russian provinces, instead of pies, so-called "birthday people" were sent to relatives - large buns without filling, decorated with raisins on top. One such pie was usually brought to each house.

As for the house of the birthday man himself, they baked a special birthday cake - “loaf”, which was broken in the midst of the festivities over the head of the hero of the occasion. Then the filling (usually raisins and nuts) fell on the head of the birthday man, and the guests at that time said: “So that gold and silver fall on you like that.”

The presence of a pie on the home table was considered at that time a guarantee of well-being. Young girls were taught to bake pies from a young age. Any marriageable girl should have been able to bake pies to perfection, because, according to old Russian tradition, the next day after the wedding, the young bride treated guests with a pie of her own preparation, who judged the housekeeping of the future hostess.

Russian cuisine has preserved a lot of recipes for pies, which have been worked out for centuries, passed down from generation to generation. And each hostess tried to bring something of her own, personal to the preparation of pies and pies. Pies differed in composition (with fish, meat, vegetable and sweet fillings); according to the method of preparing the dough: initially, pies and pies (just like pancakes and pancakes) were prepared from sour dough, as well as from yeast, puff, unleavened and shortbread. Pies differed in shape: open, closed, small and large, round and square, flat and in the form of hats. There were different ways heat treatment of pies and pies - they were fried, baked, stewed.

Pies were revered in Russia sometimes higher than bread. No wonder Russian proverbs say: “The hut is not red with corners, but red with pies”, “Red is the threshing floor with haystacks, and the table is with pies”. The presence of a pie on the Russian table spoke primarily of the well-being of the family, of its prosperity.

The composition and components used for the manufacture of pastries depended primarily on the wealth of the family. For example, in the families of peasants they were baked from rye flour dark color and lighter wheat. Usually they were large, the size reached a man's fist. The filling was cottage cheese, as well as peas, porridge, fish and sometimes meat. Wealthy families used sifted and always white wheat flour.

I wonder what they were lubricated with? For this, oatmeal and pea flour were used. These components gave the finished oven product a bright red color. By the way, today hardly every girl at the age of 18 knows how to bake them. Rather, she would prefer to buy it if she suddenly needs this pastry. And before, all the girls of this age baked, and they did it just fine. According to old customs, the young wife had to make a cake on the second day after the wedding. And according to what his taste will be, they judged the housekeeping of a woman.

Russian pies occupied a special place in Russian cuisine: not a single holiday could do without them. They baked birthday, christening, wedding Russian pies; from unleavened, yeast, puff pastry; open and closed; small pies and large pies; with all kinds of fillings: with eggs and onions, with mushrooms and potatoes, beef and lamb, from fish - rybniki, from chicken - kurniki, from berries - berries.

No wonder there was a proverb: "You will wrap everything in a pie." Russian pies baked for someone on the road before leaving home were called plantains. There were special Russian bread pies - they cut off the crust, and ate the filling with spoons. In general, you can’t list all types of Russian pies. Up to 10 types of Russian pies and pies were served daily in only one Testov tavern, and in just a year there were 3,700 types!

2. Types of pies in Russian cuisine

2.1 History of the wedding cake (loaf)

Since pagan times, in Russia, a loaf was an obligatory attribute of a wedding and its main symbol. And he appeared at the celebration not at the end, as a tasty and beautiful gift, but at the very beginning of the wedding feast, when the young, after the wedding, for the first time crossed the threshold of the house in which they were going to live (most often the groom's house). The “newly made” mother-in-law took out the loaf, and the young, breaking off pieces and dipping them in salt, ate them, in some versions they fed each other. And at the end of the evening, a man (most often a matchmaker) cut the loaf into equal parts and the young people treated them to guests. By the way, according to the decoration with which the piece came across, the guest could predict his near future.

We repeat that the loaf was never considered a dessert, but carried the symbolic meaning of the wedding ceremony. Therefore, both its production and presentation were subject to strict laws. Only cheerful, not grumpy women, not widows with two or more children, better than those of different sexes, had the right to bake a wedding loaf. After all, to this day it is believed that through food, especially through baking, when the hands of the master touch the dough for a long time, both energy and information are transmitted. It was believed that along with a piece of the “right” pie, young people received happiness, prosperity, the opportunity to have many children, well, or at least a good mood.

From this, such strict criteria for the selection of "loaf girls", because in their hands, in the literal sense, is the happiness of the future family. And taking into account the fact that the process of making and baking the loaf was accompanied by special ritual songs, the “loaf women” should still have good voice and hearing. Indeed, from a false note, the dough could “not rise”, and this was considered a sign of trouble.

Of particular importance and meaning was indulged in decorating the wedding cake. Let's start with the fact that the cake must be round. This form is both a pagan image of the sun and a symbol of the endless cycle of life. Along the edge of the pie was another symbol of infinity - a scythe. In the center, a symbol of true love, a pair of doves facing each other and touching their beaks. The same symbol was also duplicated on the towel, on which the loaf was served. Sometimes instead of doves, in a more refined version, swans were depicted in the same mise-en-scene. Necessarily a branch of viburnum, considered in Russia a symbol of fertility. By the way, viburnum could also be used as a filling option.

2.2 Types of pies in Russia.

All Russian pies in the old days had an oblong shape and different sizes: the big ones were called: pirogues, kulebyaks, small pirozhki. In fast days, they were stuffed with lamb, beef and rabbit meat, and several meats together, for example: lamb and beef lard, also meat and fish, along with an addition of porridge or noodles. On Shrovetide they baked yarn pies with cottage cheese and eggs in milk, in cow butter, with fish together and with eggs, or with meat, as the fish dish prepared in the form of cutlets was called.

HARDENING. Its name comes from a special filling called nakrepka - that is, loose porridge of yeast dough tightly fixed, as if pulled together by fish layers, stuffed with friable porridge (buckwheat, oatmeal or rice), on top of which thin slices of salted fish are tightly placed, the name of the filling is - “Nakrepok”, that is, porridge fixed, as if pulled together by fish layers, gave the name to this pie, common in the Pskov and Tver regions.

VEKOSHNIKI. The old name for pies made according to the principle "leftovers are sweet." If from yesterday’s hearty quick dinner there were leftover pieces of fish or meat (in the old days called “vekosh”), which, of course, it’s a pity to throw away, but they already look unsightly and obviously won’t decorate the dining table, the zealous hostess rolled out a piece of dough and stuffed it with all kinds lying around food, put it in the oven, and it turned out a wonderful dish for dinner ..

KALINNIK. One of the oldest Russian pies, where the berry was not put into the filling, but after being dried, it was ground into powder, brewed with boiling water into mashed potatoes, on which the rye flour dough was kneaded, sugar was not put in and baked in the form thick flatbread without filling. areas. They say that this, one of the oldest Russian pies, is still preserved in the Kaluga region and in the south of Smolensk.

JARS HARNESSED. These are triangular pies made of steep dough, kneaded in vegetable oil, stuffed with cheese, eggs or jam, which was placed in only one corner. The flour was sifted, a stiff dough was kneaded, adding water, a tablespoon of butter and salt, allowed it to “rest” for half an hour, and then from thinly rolled dough, they cut out cakes that were supplied with filling, pinched with a triangle and spun in oil.

“Yarn” is one of the most ancient types of frying in Russian cuisine. We can say that this is a Russian version of deep fat, only the product does not “float” in fat, but is cooked in contact with the surface of the pan, semi-immersed in pre-calcined oil.

BORKANNIK. In Estonian and Finnish, "porkan" means "carrot". In areas where Russians lived next to the Finnish peoples (for example, in the Pskov and Novgorod provinces), a rye or rye-wheat pie stuffed with carrots and hard-boiled eggs is called “porkannik” or “borkannik”. Yeast dough is stuffed with boiled fried carrots, onions, eggs and seasoned with cumin or dill. To others it will seem fresh, but magnificent - like a Chukhonian young lady

GUBNIK. The best of the best: delicious Pskov mushroom pie. To be honest, I don’t know why it’s called that, but the second name is camelina, if fresh mushrooms went into the filling. In the most mushroom time of the year, when it’s strange to think about dry mushrooms, the hostess will knead the yeast dough, put it under a wet towel for about three hours and, while it fits, she will knead a couple of times. The filling is prepared in a wide frying pan: salted or fresh mushrooms (salted are tastier) are fried in vegetable oil with onions and black pepper. When the filling is closed and the edges are pinched, holes are made in the upper part for steam to escape. And here's another interesting thing: it would be nice to grease the top of the cake with black tea before putting it in the oven, "for bite, color and smell."

CHAPILG. Now a closed thinly rolled pie fried in a frying pan made of sour dough on yogurt, stuffed with potatoes, cottage cheese or pumpkin is called either Adyghe or Ingush. Indeed, various variations of chapilga today are popular and loved by the peoples of the Caucasus and are considered a national dish and national pride, but he got there from Russian cuisine through the Kuban and Terek.

RUSSIAN KURNIK - a complex pie with cereals and chicken, inside shifted with pancakes, was prepared for a long time only for the wedding table. During the time of Ivan the Terrible, kurniki were served for every celebration.

RUSSIAN KULEBIAKA - an elongated pie with several layers of minced meat, has gained its popularity in the world thanks to French chefs. They, working in Russia, adapted the recipe to the requirements of "haute cuisine", giving the original Russian dish a European chic. Sometimes the filling is applied in several rows. In this case, in order to prevent the bottom crust from sticking (hardening) of the pie and to maintain clear divisions between the rows of the filling, they are shifted with thin dough pancakes baked in advance. At the same time, this or that porridge is always put in the lower layer, and fish or meat, mushrooms, onions are always placed in the upper layer.

RASTEGAI - pies with different fillings, which were visible through the hole on the top, where melted butter or broth was poured on the table when served. These pies were considered the best in Moscow taverns, they were frozen and sent to St. Petersburg. Pies were peddled on the streets of Russian cities.

Baba pie occupies a special place in Russian cuisine. Babs are high-shaped baked goods made from rich yeast dough, a kind of Easter cake. But unlike Easter cakes, they are baked at any time, and not only on Easter, and are usually served with tea or coffee. In former times, there were a great many similar products: rum and saffron women, lace and heavy, transparent and chocolate, on sour cream and on yolks, etc.

2.3 Pies. History of occurrence

One of the varieties of pie is pies. Pirozhki is a pie in miniature. Pies began to be prepared as long ago as the pie itself. In peasant families, it is customary to eat from one large bowl, which is primarily associated with practical purposes (the presence of a small amount of utensils, lack of water for washing dishes, etc.). Therefore, Russian people are used to cooking food for everyone at once. Hence the pies, large in size, which were not initially cut, but were broken off by each member of the family: a large piece went to the man - the owner (father, grandfather), then the sons broke off smaller pieces, after them - women, small slices of the pie went to the children. Naturally, such a use of the pie was not entirely convenient, and the housewives began to form small-sized pies with filling. It was convenient to eat such pies, they were taken with them in the field, they were distributed to children on the street.

What kind of pies and pies are not in Russian cuisine! Open, closed, lattice, round, triangular, low and high, with one type of minced meat and multi-layered, wedding kurniki decorated with dough figures, kulebyaki, pies, cheesecakes, hearth (baked on a hearth in a Russian oven) and spun (fried) ... You can list endlessly, especially since most Russian terms related to baking, alas, are almost forgotten.

Pies are served most often as an appetizer. They can also be an independent dish, and as an addition to national soups, especially to fish soup, cabbage soup, borscht. The most common are pies made from yeast dough, but they are also made from unleavened, rich and puff pastry.

There are several traditional forms pies: a boat, a Christmas tree, a saechka, pies, square, triangular, round pies, etc. Their sizes can also be different - from very small (snack bars) to large ones that have to be cut before serving. Most often, pies are called single-portion products, and pies are multi-portion, sliced.

Pies also belong to pies. The name "pie" was formed on a basis that determines appearance products. As you know, a pie is a pie in which the middle remains unpinched on top. In other words - an unclosed, "unbuttoned", pie.

The most common forms of patties:

boat - the filling is placed in the middle of the cake, covered with the edges of the dough, pinched, and the pie is turned over with the seam down:

herringbone - they do the same as a boat, but the seam is pinched in the form of a Christmas tree and the pie is not turned over;

saechka - the pie is given a cylindrical shape, one side is lubricated with oil, and the products are laid on sheets close to each other, allowed to distance and baked;

Moscow pie - the dough is rolled out in a circle, the filling is placed in the middle, the edges of the dough are lifted and pinched so that the middle remains open.

Novotroitsky pie - roll out the dough in a circle, put the filling, close the edges of the dough and pinch it with a Christmas tree, but so that there is a hole in the middle;

carp, kalachik - the dough is rolled out with an elongated cake, the filling is placed on one half, covered with the other half of the cake. Press the dough along the seam well. The product is shaped like a ball, bending it so that the corners are connected;

belyashi - the dough is rolled out in the form of round cakes, minced meat is placed in the middle, and the edges of the dough are lifted and pinched with a Christmas tree, a round hole is left in the middle.

3. Features of the preparation of yeast dough

3.1 Steamed and steamless cooking methods

The most characteristic of Russian cuisine were pies and pies made from yeast dough. In manuscripts of the 16th-early 17th centuries. puff pastry products are mentioned for the first time. Simple unleavened dough was known much earlier than yeast dough, and if at first pies were made from such dough, now it is used mainly for making boiled products, and yeast and yeast are preferred for baking pies. complex types unleavened dough (puff, shortbread).

For centuries, techniques for preparing yeast dough have been developed, a tradition has developed for using one or another dish and utensils: sourdough, bowl (cooperage or clay) for making sourdough, sourdough - fabric for covering dough, veselka or slingshot (whorl from the rhizome of a young Christmas tree) - for stirring sourdough and liquid dough and others. Yeast dough was prepared by sponge and non-spare methods.

With the sponge method, yeast (crushed or diluted with a small amount of water) was added to warmed milk (water or buttermilk), flour was added, stirred and left to ferment. A solution of salt and sugar, the remaining flour and milk (water or buttermilk), eggs were added to the prepared dough, and the dough was kneaded. Melted butter was usually added at the end of the kneading, the dough was left in a warm place for 1.5-2 hours for secondary fermentation. In the process of fermentation, it was crushed. Such dough was often used for making pies, kurniks, and Easter cakes.

With the unpaired method, all the raw materials put according to the recipe were kneaded at once, and the oil was also added at the end of the kneading. The fermentation process in this case lasted 2.2-4 hours, and during this time the dough was punched several times. This dough is suitable for making pies and cheesecakes. Yeast puff pastry was prepared from ordinary yeast dough prepared in a sourdough method, for which the finished dough was cooled, rolled into a rectangular layer, which was covered with softened butter, then folded in a special way in several layers, pinched the edges. This dough was suitable for making various cheesecakes and pies.

3.2 Baking pies in a Russian oven

They baked pies in adobe stoves on coals, for which they laid the pie on a special baking sheet or pan, greased with animal fat or vegetable oil. Pies were often smeared on top with eggs, sour cream or other products and baked in an oven. There is no doubt that pies baked in the oven are incomparable with those pies cooked on stovetop heat: thanks to the uniform heat of the Russian oven, the pies are well baked and rise, become ruddy with a crispy crust and have a special aroma.

In addition, such pies are much more beneficial for the body, because they go through a special stage of heat treatment, which is possible only in a Russian oven: this is baking in the heat and simultaneous exposure to steam. I must say that the preparation of pies on the stove is traditionally not characteristic of Russian cuisine and began to be introduced into it with the penetration of Western-type stoves into Russia. And the distribution of such plates began in the era of the reign of Peter I.

The long existence of pies as a favorite food is largely due not only to their high taste qualities, but also to the fact that they turned out to be, one might say, a convenient form of concentrated nutrition. Often in the pie literally consisted of the usual homemade dinner of a Russian person, that is, bread, cabbage soup, porridge, since pies were most often stuffed with cabbage, turnips, wine, mushrooms. Therefore, with the expansion of various forms of out-of-home work, pies began to be taken with them to work, on the road. It was during this period that the proverb “You wrap everything in a pie” was born.

In a classic national Russian dinner, pies always come after fish, a fish dish, so they are followed by another second - roast or porridge; in a simpler Russian dinner, they follow either immediately after the soup or after the second course.

From the middle of the XIX century. it has become customary, especially in restaurants, to serve kulebyaki, porridge pies or pies with the corresponding first courses - meat broth, cabbage soup or fish soup. AT late XIX- the beginning of the XX century. puff pies began to be served also as an appetizer for breakfast or as an independent dish for afternoon tea and dinner. Sweet pies are served with tea.

The dough of a Russian pie should always be sour, yeasty, or lively, living, as it was figuratively called in the old days. As a starter, yogurt, sour cream, beer, mash, whey can be used along with yeast. Often, sour components are combined in different combinations, and this makes it possible to diversify the consistency and taste of sour dough. In the past, bran-yeast dough was often used as a starter for pies: bran was brewed with boiling water, allowed to stand for a while, then diluted with warm water, yeast was added and left overnight. It was believed that pies made from sourdough dough are tastier, better, and more dough is obtained. At present, a safer, more fast way dough preparation.

The rich ingredients that make up the dough for Russian pies are also varied. First of all, milk, and then different kinds fats (vegetable, creamy, beef fat) and, to a much lesser extent, eggs. The choice of fat is usually related to the choice of toppings. So, vegetable oils are traditionally used in pies with vegetable filling and fish, beef kidney fat is used in pies with meat filling, butter and ghee are used in poultry pies and kulebyaki.

Freedom in the choice of the main components of the dough - flour, sourdough, liquid, muffin - has led to the emergence of numerous variations, as a result of which almost every housewife's pies bear a certain imprint of individuality. At the same time, certain traditions have developed that establish the proportions of the main parts of the test.

The dough for unsweetened pies should not be too dense in consistency, dry, as they used to say in the old days, that is, loose. For this, a thick, but not steep (with the exception of dough for Kolobovy pies) dough is prepared, most often rich, and "richness is achieved with milk or butter and, to a lesser extent, with the help of eggs, which contribute to the density and dryness of the dough. So, per 1 kg flour should account for about 0.5 liters of liquid, including water, milk, all fats and eggs.As for eggs, their usual proportion in pie dough is very low - 1 egg for every 800 g of flour, or 1.25 eggs per 1 kg of flour.

More eggs and butter are placed in the dough for sweet pies than in the dough for savory pies, and, in addition, they make it somewhat steeper in consistency and roll it into a thicker layer to prevent sugar and sweet filling (jam) from corroding the dough. In savory pies, on the contrary, the advantage is a large amount of filling and a thin, dry crust. The only exceptions are kulebyaki, where the dough at the bottom of the pie is made a little thicker to increase the layer of filling, but the consistency remains the same uncool as for other savory pies.

The dough for pies is sometimes allowed to rise three times and certainly twice, each time beating and crushing it again. This guarantees good baking of the dough and excellent taste of the product, and with a high percentage of yeast and generally sour beginning in the dough, it makes the acid invisible after baking the pies.

4. Stuffing Russian pies

The filling for Russian pies is most often prepared from one of any product. It can be a filling of vegetables (cabbage, peas, carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, sorrel), mushrooms (dry, fresh boiled, fried and salted of all kinds), a variety of steep cereals with a high oil content (usually rice), vyazigi and fish, meat, poultry (usually chicken), cottage cheese, eggs, game. Traditional fillings are porridge with onions and eggs, cabbage with eggs, mushrooms with onions and, finally, meat or fish (or elm) with rice and eggs.

Fillings of all kinds (except fish) are placed in pies only boiled, cooled. The fish filling can also be made from raw fish, which is why such pies are baked about twice as long as the others. Salted red fish is also used in pies, usually in combination with three types of cereals - rice, buckwheat and sago. The vyazigi filling needs preliminary special preparation, which will be discussed below. As for the fillings for sweet pies, most of them are made from jam (apple, currant, raspberry, cherry, strawberry, strawberry, blueberry, lingonberry), raisins with rice, prunes and figs, poppy seeds with sugar, dried bird cherry with sugar and honey. Less often in Russian cuisine (and even then recently) pies are made with fresh fruit and berries, mainly with apples, cherries, strawberries, blueberries.

The fillings should be juicy, fatty, spicier, sharper, more expressive than the normal taste dictates. This means that savory fillings should be a little saltier, a little spicier, a little fatter, and sweet ones a little sweeter. Such a “cloak” is necessary, since the dough absorbs some of the salt and sugar, and the normally salted filling in the pie may be too bland.

5. The difference between pies in shape and color.

The appearance of pies is characterized by size, shape, configuration and color. A sheet of newspaper serves as a guideline for the size of the pie. Most often they make pies the size of a quarter of a sheet or an eighth of it. Pies smaller than a sixteenth part are already called pies. Kulebyaki are made the size of half a sheet in length and a quarter of a sheet in width, that is, long, but narrow. Kulebyaks of large sizes, which do not fit on a baking sheet and, due to their size and thickness, require longer baking and high temperatures, were usually baked on the hearth, that is, in the place in the Russian stove where firewood is placed. After the burning of firewood, the coals were raked out and pies were placed on the red-hot hearth, which were therefore called hearth pies, or pads. Podoviki usually had a denser and thicker bottom crust than other pies.

A rectangle with an aspect ratio of 3:2 is the predominant form of Russian pies, but there are also pies of other shapes - round, square, triangular, long elongated (or long), and curly.

Pies also differ in the type of dough overlay. They can be closed, or deaf, when the dough surrounds the filling from all sides; half-closed, or lattice, when the dough is placed on top of the pie in the form of a lattice or ladders, and, finally, open, when the dough surrounds the filling only from below and from the sides, and the top remains completely open.

Pies stuffed with meat, fish, poultry, as well as complex and loose stuffing (mushrooms, onions, rice, eggs) are never left open. Such pies should always be carefully pinched on all sides so that the filling does not dry out and the pie does not lose its charm. Besides, open pie with a complex filling it is difficult to cut and serve - it crumbles, breaks, its appearance quickly deteriorates. But a simple filling, which also contains enough of its own moisture, such as cottage cheese, cabbage, jam, apples, can either not be covered at all if the cake is small, or covered with a braided dough to keep the filling stronger.

There is another category of semi-closed pies that are somewhat of an exception to the rule: they are covered with dough and on top, but not completely pinched, so that a narrow gap remains in the middle of the pie, which expands slightly during baking, and therefore it seems that the pie seems to be unbuttoned. Part of the filling (a piece of fish, carrot) should be visible in this slit, which gives the pie a funny look. Such pies - they are usually made very small - are called pies.

Finally, externally, the pies also differ in color. They can be dark, i.e. a glossy brown-leather color, white, i.e. light or grayish (depending on the flour), almost untouched by fire and only slightly browned from the underside, ruddy or well browned, golden brown. , but without gloss, matte, with small light patches and, finally, “poured” - with a thick layer of white flour and a crust and on the sides, through which a delicate golden blush of a toasted crust appears.

6. Secrets of making delicious pies

The main secret of successful baking is a well-kneaded dough that has risen three times. Each time the dough is kneaded with hands and allowed to come up again, and only after the third time do they start cutting it. After the cake is molded, the finished product is allowed to rise again before baking, then sent to.

The flour for the dough is sifted twice, so it is saturated with oxygen and the dough becomes airy. When kneading yeast dough, all products should be warm - this will help reduce the rise time. Milk or water for kneading should be warmed to room temperature, but not hot. Milk pies are tastier and have a smooth crust.

Excess sugar causes the dough to settle, pies become heavy and burn quickly when baked. Butter or fat is better not to melt, soften to the density of sour cream and add to the dough at the last punch. This will help reduce the proofing time. Salt is added to the flour at the very end, when the dough has already fermented.

To keep the bottom of the cake dry, the baking dish should be lightly sprinkled with starch. There should be no drafts in the room where the kneading and cutting of the dough takes place, otherwise the pies will not rise.

Both the dough and the dough should not be re-done, otherwise the pies will be sour. For more than three hours, the dough does not part, it needs to be molded and baked pies.

The top of closed pies is smeared with butter, eggs or milk, this gives the pastry an appetizing look. The most beautiful color is obtained by smearing with whipped yolks, they are evenly applied with a pastry brush.

When laying out the cake on a baking sheet or in a form, an empty space is left around it - this way the cake will be better baked, it will have a place to “sprout”.

Do not open the oven during the first twenty minutes of baking the cake. It is better to immediately put the cake in a non-hot oven over medium heat. After twenty minutes, you can check the cake by slightly opening the oven and adding a little heat. If the cake is tall, it is baked on the lowest fire so that it is completely baked.

However, you cannot bake a yeast cake for a long time - it becomes dry. If the filling is already ready, the cake is baked for no more than thirty minutes, pies - twenty. Pies with a raw filling take longer to bake, the dough should not be put in such pies a lot: the filling should also have time to reach without drying the crust.

If you pour salt under the mold on a separate baking sheet, the cake will never burn. If the top of the cake starts to burn, you can cover it with oiled parchment.

The easiest way to remove the cake from the mold is to place it on a damp towel immediately after baking.

The readiness of the cake is checked by lightly pressing a clean finger on the surface, if the hole is immediately restored - the cake is ready, if it remains crushed - the cake is sent to the oven for baking.

The finished hot cake is not cut, it is allowed to cool. In extreme cases, the knife is heated in boiling water, wiped and cut with sharp movements so that the cake does not wrinkle.

The finished cake is covered with a clean towel and allowed to cool in the same room where it was baked.

Bibliography

For the preparation of this work, materials from the site were used.

Kulebyaka is one of the oldest Russian closed pies with a rather complex filling, consisting of different products. In such a pie, you can put any products that are available in the house: meat, fish, vegetables, mushrooms, cereals, eggs, cottage cheese or cheese. If juicy fillings are placed in the kulebyaka, then in order to prevent the dough from getting soaked, the fillings are interspersed with small pancakes baked separately. Of course, every housewife who bakes such pies must have her own secrets for preparing fillings or minced meat for pie.

The main thing that distinguishes a kulebyaka from an ordinary closed pie is its shape and a much larger amount of filling than in pies. In the old days, kulebyak makers were famous for baking kulebyaks with multi-layer filling. Each layer of the filling was interleaved with a pancake so that the fillings baked well, but at the same time, the kulebyaka turned out to be juicy. So one of the most famous Moscow kulebyaks, called "Baydakov's pie", was a huge pie with a filling of 12 tiers, where there were almost all the fillings - from burbot liver to bone marrow.

There are a huge number of recipes for making kulebyak in Russia. Get to know just a few of them and be sure to try baking at least once and at least one of them.

MAIN FEATURES OF COOKING KULEBYAKI, CUTTING AND DESIGN OF KULEBYAKI

The form of cutting kulebyaki can be different:

* FOUR-ANGULAR, the fillings in which are arranged in wedges ("kulebyaka on four corners")

* OVAL, the fillings in which are arranged in an oblong slide.

The sliced ​​cake should be more convex and at the same time narrower than other cakes.

You can form a kulebyak in different ways:

* roll out two oval layers from the yeast dough separately, put the filling on one of them, cover with a second layer and, having beautifully pinched the edges, decorate the surface of the pie;

* according to another method of cutting, roll out the dough layer in half bigger size than the size of the pan, put the filling in the middle, connect and carefully pinch the edges of the workpiece in the center. Then put the kulebyaka on a deep, oiled pan with the seam down. Decorate the surface of the pie with small pastry ornaments in the form of leaves, twigs, flowers or bindings from dough strips, gluing them to the surface of the pie with a beaten egg.

The surface of the kulebyaki, along with decorations, is smeared with egg yolk and must be deeply pierced from above and from the sides with a fork to release steam during baking.

Baking kulebyaki

Kulebyaka is baked in a hot oven so that the top crust is fried, and the bottom, also fried, remains juicy at the same time.

The old masters put a piece of ice in the filling of the kulebyaka, which “when melted during baking, will keep the kulebyaka juicy”. And it is precisely the special art that the housewives must master in order to cook a well-baked kulebyaka, but with a juicy filling.
Kulebyaka is served hot or cold as an independent snack or with meat, fish, mushroom broths. Hot kulebyaka can be served with sour cream or various spicy sour cream sauces.

MEAT KULEBIAKA

Products for the test:

* 600 g flour
* 30 g yeast
* 1 glass of milk
* 200 g butter
* 3 yolks
* 1 teaspoon salt
* sugar to taste

Filling products:

* 1 kg. beef pulp
* 2-3 bulbs
* 2 hard boiled eggs

* salt, ground pepper, chopped herbs to taste

Yeast dough is prepared in the sourdough method. You can cook kulebyaka from unleavened crumbly dough.

KULEBIAKA RUSSIAN PRESENT

Products for the test:

* 400-500 g flour
* 30-40 g yeast
* 1.5 cups of milk
* 100 g butter or margarine
* 1-2 eggs
* salt and sugar to taste

Products for fish filling:

* 400 g pike or zander fillet
* 1 tbsp. a spoonful of vegetable oil
* 2 hard boiled eggs
* 2 tbsp. spoons of crushed breadcrumbs
* 1 tbsp. a spoonful of sour cream
* 1/3 cup milk
* 1-2 bulbs

* 300 g oily fish fillets for a separate filling

Ingredients for rice filling:

* 200 g rice
* 2.5 cups of water

* 1 teaspoon salt

Preparing the rice filling

Boil the rice in salted water until almost cooked and let cool. Put the rice in a greased pan, spread small pieces of butter on the surface and bake in a hot oven until the surface is lightly browned.

Preparing fish stuffing

Carefully remove the bones from the pike fillet and pass it through a meat grinder twice along with onions. Add finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, pour in milk and sour cream, salt and pepper to taste and mix well. Pour crushed crackers into the filling and, after mixing again, let the filling stand in a cold place to ripen.

Separately, prepare the fillet of low-boned oily fish, cut it into slices and lightly salt.

Dough preparation

From all the components of the recipe, prepare the yeast dough in the sponge method and let it ferment well, upsetting it 2-3 times during the cooking process.

Cutting and baking kulebyaki

Roll out the finished dough in the form of an oval cake up to 2 cm thick. In the center of it, lay layers of minced fish and rice in an oblong slide, then pieces of prepared fatty fish fillet and again a layer of minced meat and rice. The thickness of each layer of filling is arbitrary, depending on the size of the pie. Wrap the edges of the cake and pinch tightly over the minced meat.

Decorate the surface of the pie with decorations made from strips of dough in the form of flowers, leaves and twigs. Let the kulebyaka prepared in this way rest for 15-20 minutes in a warm place. After that, grease its surface with beaten egg yolk and make several deep punctures with a fork to release steam during baking.

Bake kulebyaka in a well-heated oven, the baking time depends on the thickness of the dough and the type of minced meat. The readiness of the pie can be determined by piercing it with a thin wooden stick or a match: if it remains dry, then the pie is ready. Serve kulebyaka hot as an appetizer or with fish broth.

KULEBYAKA SNACK WITH TRIPLE FILLINGS
PREPARING THE FILLINGS

Products for mushroom filling:

* 500 g salted mushrooms
* 3-4 bulbs
* ground black pepper to taste

Rinse salted mushrooms, drain, finely chop and fry in vegetable oil. Add finely chopped onion, separately fried until golden brown, seasoned with salt, ground pepper and mix well.

Products for meat stuffing:

* 300 g boiled meat
* 3 bulbs
* 1 tbsp. a spoonful of butter
* salt and ground black pepper to taste

Boil the meat, pass through a meat grinder, add the fried finely chopped onion along with the oil in which it was fried, and season with black pepper, salt and butter. If the filling is dry, you can pour 1-2 tbsp into it. spoons of meat broth.

Products for potato filling:

* 4-5 potatoes
* 1 egg
* 1 tbsp. a spoonful of butter
*salt to taste

Peel potatoes, boil in a small amount of salted water, so that by the end of cooking the water has almost completely boiled away. Mash the hot potatoes, beat in the egg, season with butter, salt and mix well.

Cutting and baking kulebyaki

Roll out the finished yeast dough in the form of a rectangle up to 1 cm thick. Transfer it to a greased baking sheet so that half of the dough is on the baking sheet and the other half is on the table. On top of the dough, also in the form of a rectangle, spread out a slightly warm mushroom filling. Put on it with the same rectangle mashed potatoes, and on top of it - meat stuffing. Carefully close the fillings with the second half of the dough, pinch the seam, bend it down, giving the cake a clear shape.

Grease the surface of the kulebyaki with a beaten egg, prick with a fork and place in a well-heated oven. When the surface of the cake becomes evenly golden, and the walls slightly move away from the baking sheet, the kulebyaka is ready.

KULEBIAKA RUSSIAN FESTIVE

Products for the test:

* 1.2-1.3 kg. flour
* 200 g butter
* 2 glasses of milk
* 6 eggs
* 50-60 g yeast
* a pinch of salt

Filling products:

* 600-800 g fresh small-boned fish fillets
* 5-6 bulbs
* 300 g butter
* 0.5 cup chopped dill
* 3 cups buckwheat
* 2 eggs
* 800 g fresh salmon or salmon fillet

Dough preparation

Dilute yeast in milk, add half the norm of freshly sifted flour, knead the dough and put it in a warm place for fermentation. Add salt, yolks, melted warm butter (or 100 g of vegetable oil) to the dough that has come up, mix thoroughly and add the remaining flour. Knead the dough, gradually adding whipped whites to the foam. Put the dough in a warm place to rise, periodically upsetting it with a wooden paddle.

Preparation of buckwheat

Before cooking the kulebyaki, sort out the buckwheat groats, rub them thoroughly with your hands with a raw egg - the groats will be very sticky at first, but will gradually absorb the entire egg during the rubbing process. Scatter the grits in a thin layer on a cutting board and dry, kneading the grains that have stuck together.

Filling preparation

Remove the bones from the fillet of fresh fish, fry it in 1 tbsp. a spoonful of butter along with finely chopped onions. Then add dill greens and chop the whole mass well. Boil 2.5 cups of water with the remaining oil, add prepared buckwheat, season with salt to taste, mix well and put in a hot oven, covering the bowl with porridge with a lid. When the grits are well steamed, mix it with prepared minced fish.

Cutting and baking kulebyaki

Roll out the finished dough into a layer 1 cm thick. Transfer the rolled out layer of dough to a large round heat-resistant dish, leaving the edges so that they can be connected and pinched. Put half of the filling in the middle of the dough, smooth it, lay the salmon or salmon fillet cut into slices on top of it. Make the top layer from the remaining filling, laying it in a slide.

Connect the opposite edges of the dough and pinch with a beautiful seam. Pierce the surface and sides of the pie with a fork, brush it with beaten egg and sprinkle with ground breadcrumbs. Bake the pie in a hot oven until done. After removing from the oven, cover the cake with a sheet of parchment or tracing paper and wrap it warmly, leave
for 1-1.5 hours.

RUSSIAN FISH KULEBIAKA

Products for the test:

* 600-800 g flour
* 1 glass of milk
* 150 g butter or margarine
* 3 yolks
* 50 g yeast
* 1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling products:

* 600 g pike perch fillet
* 400 g sturgeon fillet
* 200 g salmon fillet
* 1.25 cups buckwheat chopped with 1 egg
* 100 g butter
* 1 bulb
* chopped dill
*salt and pepper to taste

Dough preparation

Dissolve the yeast in warm milk, add half the norm of flour and knead the dough. Let it ferment well, add butter, egg yolks, salt and the remaining flour. Knead the dough thoroughly and let it rise well.

Filling preparation

If possible, select all the bones from the pike perch fillet, cut it into pieces and fry in oil along with finely chopped onions, fresh or dried dill. Then cool and chop everything together very finely.

Grind the buckwheat with a raw egg with your hands and rub through a rare sieve. Boil 1.25 cups of water with butter, add the prepared buckwheat, salt to taste and stir quickly. Put the pan with buckwheat in a hot oven and brown. Remove from the oven and mix thoroughly the resulting porridge with prepared minced fish.
Cut the rest of the fish fillet into thin slices and lightly salt.

Cutting and baking kulebyaki

Cut a long or round kulebyaka from the prepared dough and put half of the prepared fish filling in the middle. On top, lay out the slices of the rest of the fish fillet and again a layer of filling, carefully forming each layer in the form of a slide. Pinch the kulebyaku, decorate with decorations from pieces of dough in the form of leaves, twigs, roses and put for half an hour in a warm place to rise. Brush the surface with beaten egg and bake in a well-heated oven. Serve kulebyaka hot or warm, to taste.

KULEBIAKA WITH FISH FILLINGS
PREPARING THE FILLINGS

Products for fish stuffing with rice:

* 1-1.2 kg. fish fillet without skin and bones
* 200 g rice
* 100 g butter
* 5 cool eggs
* salt and ground black pepper to taste
* 50 g oil for frying fish

Boil friable rice, season it with butter and salt to taste, mix with finely chopped hard-boiled eggs. Cut the fish fillet into pieces and fry in oil (creamy or vegetable). When cutting kulebyaki, lay prepared rice and pieces of fish in layers, which can also be sprinkled with chopped hard-boiled eggs.

Products for fish stuffing with cabbage:

* 1 kg. fresh cabbage
* 6 cool eggs
* 1 kg. fish fillet without skin and bones
* 200 g butter

Finely and thinly chop the cabbage, lightly salt, rub with your hands and let stand for a while. Then squeeze it well from the juice and fry in vegetable or butter, adding (if desired) finely chopped onion during frying. Cool the prepared cabbage and mix with chopped hard-boiled eggs. Cut the fish fillet into pieces, salt and also fry in oil. When cutting kulebyaki, lay cabbage filling and pieces of fish fillet in layers on the dough. The top layer of the filling should be cabbage.

Cutting and baking kulebyaki

Kulebyaka with such fillings is prepared from yeast rich or lean dough. The order of cutting and baking pies is similar to the above recipes. The toppings can be used for the pie either separately (for different pies), or together in one pie, laying them out in layers to taste.

KULEBIAKA WITH FISH AND POTATO FILLING

Filling products:

* 350 g fresh fish fillet
* 3 potatoes
* 3 bulbs
* 0.5 cup vegetable oil
* salt and ground pepper to taste

Filling preparation

Lay raw peeled potatoes cut into thin circles in the middle of the dough layer. On top of it - fish fillet cut into small slices. Salt to taste and spread thin onion rings over the surface of the filling. Pour over the filling with vegetable oil (2/3 of the norm) and quickly pinch the edges. Instead of raw potatoes, you can use mashed potatoes for the filling.

Baking kulebyaki

Prepare a simple yeast lean dough, cut it into a layer of the desired shape, size and thickness. Form a pie and bake it in a not very hot oven for about an hour. Then grease the hot surface with vegetable oil and transfer the cake to a dish.

KULEBIAKA WITH CABBAGE FILLING

Products for the test:

* 1/2 cup flour
* 1/2 cup semolina
* 0.5 cups of water
* 2 tbsp. butter spoons
* 25 g yeast
* a pinch of salt

Filling products:

* 1 medium cabbage
* 5 raw eggs
* salt and ground pepper to taste

Filling preparation

Rinse the cabbage, remove the upper green leaves and chop finely. Grate the stalk on a coarse grater and mix with cabbage. Mix everything, salt to taste, pepper and rub lightly with your hands.

Dough preparation

Mix freshly sifted flour with semolina and pour into a bowl with a slide. Make a funnel in it, pour in the yeast diluted in warm water, melted butter, salt and knead the dough. Beat it with a wooden spatula until it stops sticking to your hands. Let the dough ripen for about an hour, putting it in a bowl and wrapping it warmly.

Cutting and baking kulebyaki

Divide the dough first into small pieces and then roll them all together into a ball. Let stand for a while and roll out a small cake from this ball. Sprinkle it with flour mixed with semolina, fold it in half like a handkerchief, and carefully (so that the dough does not stick together) roll it out with a rolling pin. The prepared cake will increase in size when rolled out. Shake it lightly in your hands and repeat the rolling 3-4 times.

Lay the cabbage filling in a pile on the prepared layer of dough, carefully squeezing it from the resulting juice. Fasten the edges of the dough base so that there is a hole in the middle, through which pour beaten or whole (always salted to taste) raw eggs onto the cabbage filling.

Pinch the left hole, put the pie on a dry sheet and bake in a hot oven for about half an hour. Transfer the finished cake to a dish, grease with butter and serve hot or slightly cooled.

KULEBIAKA WITH SALTED MUSHROOMS AND ONIONS

Filling preparation

Rinse salted mushrooms, finely chop and mix with chopped or minced onion. The proportions of the products are arbitrary.

Cutting and baking a pie

Prepare lean simple yeast dough and roll it into a layer (along the length of the baking sheet) about 20 cm wide and up to 1 cm thick.

Spread the filling in the middle of the strip of dough along its entire length. Pinch the edges of the dough tightly, place the kulebyaka on a sheet greased with vegetable oil and bake until done. Grease the hot kulebyaka with vegetable oil and serve.
Such a kulebyaka is prepared during fasting.

KULEBYAK "MIKHAILOVSKAYA"

Preparation of dough and sourdough

Prepared and well-washed carrots, turnips and pumpkins, taken in approximately equal weight fractions, pass through a meat grinder. Add beer, kefir, salt, flour to taste and knead a fairly steep unleavened dough. It is good to knock it out on a cutting board, put it in a bowl and put it in a warm place for a day so that the dough oxidizes. Separate part of the finished dough and save for sourdough.

For the filling of such pie, you can use any products (cereals, pasta, vegetables), passing them through a meat grinder.

Cutting and baking kulebyaki

From the prepared dough, roll out a layer of the desired size and shape. Lay on it in layers the filling of fresh shredded cabbage, chopped onion, sliced ​​\u200b\u200bfish fillet (or other products to taste and possibilities). Pour over the filling with fish broth, sprinkle with dried or fresh mint, crushed juniper berries.

Close the top of the pie with the second layer of dough, pinch the edges and let it rest for about an hour. Bake the cake in a medium-heated oven, the kulebyaka is baked for a long time, so if its surface is fried during baking, the cake must be covered with paper moistened with water.

You can bake kulebyaka in a different way:

Put the pie in the oven for 20-30 minutes so that the surface of the dough becomes dense. Then take out, carefully cover with paper and let stand for 15-20 minutes. Remove the paper, and bake the pie in the oven until cooked (about half an hour or a little more). Grease the hot kulebyaka with oil or thick sour cream, cover with a towel and let it “rest” (gain flavor) for half an hour.

KULEBYACHKI

These are small-sized pies, most popular in northern and Siberian cuisine, which are baked mainly from any yeast dough stuffed with fresh small fish (capelin, White Sea herring) or large fish cut into pieces (whitefish, cod, halibut). Soaked salted herring is also used in the filling.

Cutting and baking kulebyachek

From a well-fermented (lean or rich, to taste) yeast dough, cut the balls of the desired size. Roll out rectangular blanks 8-10 cm wide and 12-15 cm long. Evenly place a whole raw, pre-salted fish or pieces of fish in the middle of each. Raise the edges of the workpiece up and wrap it so that a small open rectangle remains in the middle.

Lay the sliced ​​kulebyachki on a baking sheet, not tightly to each other, so that they do not stick together during baking. Brush the surface of the pies with beaten egg and bake in a hot oven until done. Serve kulebyachki hot as an independent snack or with fish soup, fish soup.

Kulebyaka is simply a miracle of Russian cuisine. And it has nothing to do with what is now sold under this proud name in stores.

I will tell you the history of this dish, tell you about my path in cooking and give you one old recipe from a 19th century cookbook (and separately - my recommendations for “improving” this recipe).

If you are not interested in stories, then scroll down the page - do not slip past the recipe.

And I will begin, mothers and fathers, my story.

About kulebyaka

I can cook, if not everything, then almost everything. Two or three years ago, there was one shameful gap in my culinary past - I never “worked” with dough. No, roll out the store and blind something - this is always welcome. But honestly, tell me that you like frozen convenience food. Even if it is very decent, it is only decent and nothing more.

As they say in one cheerful southern city: “Decent is a good argument, but not yet a reason to get married.”

The dough should be homemade, fresh, lush, simply "indecent in its nakedness." There must be temptation. And individual unforgettable taste. And this is possible only if you make the dough with your own hands.

However, back to the pie. In my happy childhood this pie just didn't exist. I was born in the Far East, and there is a special attitude towards fish: fry, salt, smoke. And I’ll tell you honestly that if you have fresh-fresh (not fresh-frozen) fish, then don’t be smart, but immediately put it in a frying pan. It definitely won't taste better.

Remember how Ivan Gurevich Zhilin used to say from Chekhov's "Siren":

... then you never need to think about smart; clever yes scientist always knocks off the appetite. If you please know yourself, philosophers and scientists are the last people about food and worse than them, excuse me, they don’t even eat pigs.

Fresh fish just needs to be fried. And that's it. But if you have this fish more than “to fry”, then you can (and should) kulebyachit.

Yes, I digress again. Despite the fact that my grandmother (God rest her kingdom) and my mother are cooks from God, they didn’t cook fish pies in our house. With meat, cheese, cherries, sorrel, apples, cabbage, raspberries and God only knows what else. But with fish, no.

And then we moved to live in the Urals and I saw her in the cooking of a large store. She was lying on a faience plate, looking so pale, wrinkled, cold, and clearly no longer young. And on it, a proud sail, a price tag was piled up, on which a funny word was written in a blue ballpoint hand: “Kulebyaka”.

• Mom, look, they sell byaku. Let's buy?
• You won't eat it!

But I was a very purposeful child - I saved up money on school lunches, bought it and realized that my mother needed to be listened to. I'd rather buy a cheburek! If you only knew what pasties were fried on Metallurgov Avenue in the city of Magnitogorsk before perestroika! But I will talk about this sometime later.

The second meeting with the kulebyaka took place many years later. I was a student and worked in practice in the city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), at a car factory. The girl from the brigade invited me to visit (and don't think anything bad). They lived together: grandmother, mother and granddaughter. Those. without male hands. And it was necessary to fix the wiring in the old house. I fixed the wiring and was invited to "try the pie." Well, in fact, I'm a student in practice, not a plumber. Don't settle accounts with me with a bottle.

• I will treat you to my signature kulebyaka, - said the grandmother.

And I thought that people, in general, are very ungrateful. I worked all day, and they will ****** feed me for it. And I, as a well-mannered intelligent student, with an incomplete education, will now pretend that I have not eaten anything tastier. Should have asked for a bottle!
Set the table like decent people, I brought a samovar from the yard, and then my granddaughter's grandmother brought it in - "our signature kulebyaka." The aroma (where they just hid it and why I “didn’t smell it” before) is simply fabulous, ruddy, thick, beautiful ... Unusual taste and very, very oily (in the most delicious sense of the word). And again I regretted that I was not a plumber, because you can’t eat a lot of such a pie with tea. And this, you see, is very disappointing. Especially the next day, when you pick sticky pasta with a fork in the factory canteen.

Then a lot of things happened in my life, but there was no more such pie.

And about three years ago, my brother-soldiers invited me to the day of the Airborne Forces in the city of Ulyanovsk for fishing. I won't tell you how we celebrated and fished - these are military everyday life and civilians will not be interested. But after the holidays, I brought home a huge fresh catfish - I drove the car all day like crazy so that the fish would not go rotten.

At home he cooked fish soup, treated "local" brother-soldiers, friends and a few relatives. But even after the feast, “there is still a lot of som” left, and the age-old Russian question arose: “What to do?” And here, from the depths of memory or from a brain affected by alcohol - a kulebyaku. And my desire quickly turns into a mania.

• How to make kulebyaku Mr. Fox?
• And on our shelf there is an old booklet "Russian Cuisine". And in such a book it is simply impossible not to have kulebyaki.

Russian kulebyaka

I will start the story about the kulebyak with the great classics. For example, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "Siren":

Kulebyaka should be appetizing, shameless, in all its nakedness, so that there is a temptation. You wink at her with your eye, cut off a kind of bite and move your fingers over her like that, from an excess of feelings. You start eating it, and from it oil, like tears, the filling is fatty, juicy, with eggs, offal, with onions ...

And now Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol with his immortal novel "Dead Souls":

Yes, make a pie at four corners, put sturgeon cheeks and a screech in one corner, put buckwheat porridge in the other, and mushrooms with onions, sweet milk, and brains, and you know that sort of thing there ... Yes, so that from one side she, you know, it would blush, but let it go easier on the other. Yes, from the bottom, you know, bake it so that it crumbles, so that it gets through, you know, with juice, so that you don’t hear it in your mouth - like the snow has melted.

Subsequently, readers suspected Gogol that he wrote this piece of the novel on an empty stomach, and in the kitchen they started a kulebyak and the author was daydreaming as a hungry person, but who understands a lot about kulebyaks, can only dream.

But no, he may have dreamed, but only dreamed very objectively. Well-known author N.I. Kovale, in his book “Stories about Russian Cuisine”, claims that in “Dead Souls” we read not the feverish delirium of an ardent but hungry kulebyaki, but the old recipe for “Moscow-style kulebyaki”. That's how it is, mothers and fathers. In those days, not only literature was great ...

In that Moscow kulebyak, minced meat was laid out not in layers, but in wedges, separating each type of minced meat with pancakes. Hence the kulebyaka “at four corners”. And they made that kulebyaka from unleavened rich crumbly dough. special art it was required in order to bake a kulebyaka with juicy minced meat "to crumble like snow." It's about the bottom of the pie.

But what is a kulebyaka actually and why is it called that? The word is old and there is an assumption that it comes from the Finnish ******. Translated into Russian - fish. Therefore, initially kulebyaka was prepared exclusively with fish filling.

Experts say that the one that was a very long time ago was baked from sour dough with fish filling and was served to the table only (and only) hot. This is not a French pie. A screech is laid on top of the fish (these are such veins from the sturgeon ridge. Until the seventies of the last century, the screech was freely sold “in all stores in the country”), and chopped eggs are placed on the screech, and besides, various cereals and seasonings. Kulebyaka with Neva whitefish was especially appreciated. Yes, it is also suggested to put a piece of ice inside the pie. This ice will melt as the cake bakes and will keep the pie very juicy.

It (kulebyaka) should be well baked so that the upper crust is crispy, and the lower one, although juicy, does not stick to the teeth.

Since there are currently temporary problems with the Neva whitefish, it can be replaced with halibut, cod, pike or other healthy and tasty fish.

Later recipes "gone" from the fish filling. Today you can meet kulebyaka, with "whatever you put in the refrigerator, with that kulebyaka."

There is an assumption that the kulebyaku is determined not by the filling, but by the shape of the pie and a much larger (than in other pies) amount of minced meat.

And now the easiest of the old recipes. I'll tell you right away what exactly I added to it. If you remember, then I built my first kulebyaka with catfish meat. It turned out very tasty, but .... My catfish in the pie just melted, but I wanted to “bite the fish”. And on the other hand, the cake turned out to be very juicy, fish oil soaked not only the filling, but also the dough. Even the bottom of the pie turned out not “like snow”, but with a crust (fat soaked the dough and it began to fry in a baking sheet). To be honest, I liked it. But, it's an amateur.

The recipe calls for kulebyaka with pike. In my opinion, the pike is a bit dry. You can compensate for this dryness with oil, but I prefer the good old (in the sense of proven) catfish. I don’t pass it through a meat grinder, but cut it into sticks, which I spread on minced meat. It turns out very tasty: there is fish, and very juicy.

This recipe will take time to make. Hours of commercials 5. If the dough comes up faster, then you can meet four.

Kulebyaki recipe

You will need:

For test:

• Wheat flour - 400 g
• Yeast - 20-30 g
• Milk - one and a half glasses
• Butter - 100 g
• Chicken egg - -1-2 pcs.
• Salt and sugar - to taste.

For minced fish:

• Pike fillet (or other tasty fish) - 400 g
• Vegetable oil - 1 tablespoon
• Crushed crackers - 2 tablespoons
• Sour cream - 1 tablespoon
• Milk - 1/3 cup
• Onion - 1 bulb
• Salt and pepper - to taste.

For the rice filling:

• Rice - 200 g
• Water - 2.5 cups
• Butter - 1 tablespoon
• Salt - about 1 teaspoon

And besides:

• Egg yolk for greasing
• Fillet of any oily fish (for example, catfish) - 300 g.

Cooking pie:

1. Prepare yeast dough in the sourdough method. Hope you know how. Let me remind you very briefly: In warm water or milk (30-35 degrees), put the yeast (pre-mix the yeast in water), add 1/3 of the flour and stir until a homogeneous dough is formed. Put for fermentation in a warm place, after sprinkling flour on top. Be attentive to the container for the dough - the volume of the dough will increase by almost three to four times. So that you don’t collect this dough on the floor later. Oh, that would be embarrassing. It will ferment for 3 or even four hours (it depends on the yeast).
   After the fermentation is over, the dough will begin to fall, so you need to catch it "at the peak of beauty."
   Pour the remaining milk (or water) into the prepared dough. Lightly salt the liquid first. Then add sugar, eggs, flour and knead, knead, knead. Until the dough becomes viscous, smooth and does not easily fall behind your hands. At the end of the "kneading" add butter and ... knead again until the butter is completely combined with the dough.
   Leave the dough for secondary fermentation for about 2 hours. As the dough increases in volume, knead it several times. This way it will ripen faster. This whole procedure will take you up to five hours.
2. In the meantime, the dough comes, you need to cook rice porridge, cool it and put it in a greased pan, and bake in the oven until a light golden crust forms.
3. Pass the pike fillet twice through a meat grinder along with onions, add finely chopped boiled eggs to the minced meat, then all the other ingredients and mix well. The stuffing should be almost uniform.
4. When the dough is ready, it needs to be rolled out into an oval cake, about a finger thick. And start laying the minced meat on this cake in layers: minced fish, rice, fatty fish fillet in pieces, and repeat the layers again. We are building such an oblong hill on a cone. Lay out the layers until the stuffing runs out.
5. Then, wrap the edges of the cake and “pinch” over the minced meat. Decorate the pie with “any garbage” from the dough: flowers there, or fish. It’s just that without all this (I won’t repeat this word), the kulebyaka is not quite a kulebyaka. We must, Fedya. For high art.
6. Put the kulebyaka in a warm place (for proofing) for 20 minutes. Then, grease it with egg yolk and be sure to pierce it with a fork. And not just once. And then it explodes. In the sense that it will subdue beauty.
7. Bake kulebyaka at a temperature of 210-220 degrees. The baking time depends on the thickness of both the dough and minced meat. Here you need a wooden skewer (to poke dough and minced meat) or a true nose and a true eye.

Enjoy your meal! Maybe with tea. But I advise you to aggravate a little and enjoy it to the maximum extent.

Kulebyaka and cold is good, but kind person, where to go, should gobble it up hot. So much tastier and better.

And in conclusion. By and large, the Hamburg account can create any filling. It happens that the minced meat turns out to be very juicy. In this case, you can go to 4 corners, in the sense that you will need such thin pancakes and minced meat can be laid with these pancakes.

If you are building a very high kulebyaka, then you can roll out not one oval from the dough, but two: bottom and top. Make the bottom one thinner than the top one. If the minced meat is juicy, then the bottom will be better with a slight crunch than sticky. And then you have to "dry" in a pan.

In the good old days, kulebyaka was not the final dish, but only an appetizer. For the first course. Already closer to the twentieth century, not kulebyaks, but kulebyachki began to be served with broths. These are such small pies that were prepared in exactly the same way as the main kulebyaka. But minced meat for kulebyacheks was made with meat and cabbage. But, this is optional.

Cooking a real kulebyaka is not at all easy. And it may happen that the first time you do not succeed as you want. And it didn't work out the way I wanted. But even then it was delicious. A little not as pretty as planned.

Russian cuisine - it requires skills and patience. And how it goes, so by the ears ... In general, once again,

Enjoy your meal! And success.

Why barge haulers did not want to eat black caviar? How many cutlets with peas could barefoot boys order in a fashionable tavern? And in what institutions reigned revelry? Rambler/Family talks about how Muscovites ate at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

That's so kvass - Just right! Cork breaks! The smoke is coming! It hits the nose, the hiccups in the mouth! Puff up!

So the hawkers and hawkers shouted with jokes - one might say, the lowest category of edible merchants. They sometimes looked exotic, wearing entire structures with their cheap goods on their heads, as is customary even now in some places in the East. But we are not talking about distant countries, but about Moscow in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Peddlers and hawkers sold food for a penny - this is the so-called "tripe", and buckwheat (a couple of pieces for a penny!), And pancakes, boiled pears, kvass and other unpretentious food. For three kopecks, you could eat a bowl of cabbage soup with bread. For 2 kopecks - a bowl of porridge. Let everything be not the first freshness, but the working people did not disdain.

Another thing is restaurants. It is difficult to say how taverns differed from taverns in the 19th century - except perhaps for greater respectability, and even then not always. Over time, the distinction between a tavern and a restaurant has also faded. Although initially the taverns held firmly to Russian cuisine, and the restaurants were establishments with foreign dishes, “imported” first from France, and then from other countries. So it was possible to stand in a dead end from the offer to taste the “Caucasian shish kebab from English lamb”.

Staromoskovsky tavern

In Pushkin's time, as we remember, there was already a Yara restaurant, and the poet recalled the "cold veal" in connection with this French institution, then located in a house on the corner of Kuznetsky Most and the current Neglinnaya Street. Later, the restaurant changed its location and became famous for its luculla dinners and the wild revelry of merchants. The phrase "Go to Yar" was almost synonymous with revelry. Although the name "Yar" is just a French surname, in no way connected with Russian words with a similar root: rage, brightness, rage, Yarilo and so on.

Yes, Russian was gradually eroded, and by the beginning of the 20th century, taverns almost did not differ from restaurants in the assortment of dishes - both Russian and foreign. And the selection was amazing! Cold beluga, sturgeon, caviar, amber balyk, huge kulebyaks and pies, burbot liver and bone marrow, white fish, village woman and piglets with horseradish, veal (white as snow!), asparagus and transparent slices of ham, game. The endless list also included vodka and wines for every taste and pocket. Portions were just as impressive: if a pie - then the whole plate. Vladimir Gilyarovsky recalled that not everyone would have eaten half the portion in a tavern, like the Testov tavern! And this abundance was inexpensive, so that almost every Muscovite and guest of the capital could afford such a meal, as long as he did not belong to the working people and the poor. Although both working people and students sometimes went to these best taverns - Testova, Egorova, Gurina, Bolshoi Moscow.

the Red Square

Once, a gang of "hungry errand boys" from the malls, where they lived and served from hand to mouth, showed up at Testov's tavern. For the 20 rubles donated by the merchant “in honor of the holiday”, the boys ordered 20 servings of cutlets, and even with peas. The order was fulfilled, and the astonished sex workers brought in a whole pile of cutlets. The juvenile bastard pounced on the treat and, when only leftovers flaunted on the dishes, she smelled the stale smell from the cutlets. The manager in the hall, making sure that the cutlets were really stale, ordered 20 servings of fresh cutlets to be served again. The boys ate it too. “In Moscow, they call thinly, but they eat thickly,” says an old proverb.

How can one not recall here the Volga barge haulers, about whom the same V. Gilyarovsky spoke about, who in his stormy youth was also a barge hauler. Barge haulers in those days ate a lot of black caviar, fortunately, the Volga was full of sturgeons. And now the old barge hauler complains at a halt: “This caviar has sickened me! The vobla is tougher!”

You will be surprised, but you can still taste dishes of real old Moscow cuisine today. Restaurant Kutuzovskiy 5 presents the three-hundred-year history of Russian cuisine in one menu: all dishes here are prepared according to recipes from cookbooks of the 18th and 19th centuries. This is a completely unique place where you can try pies with cod or screech, sturgeon boiled pork, veal tongue with horseradish and onion jam, grouse, partridge, pheasant and truffle pate, apples soaked in barrels and much more.

The essay was prepared by Nikolai Voronovsky, an architect-restorer, the author of the radio station Through the Looking Glass.

19 chose

"... Yes, make a kulebyaku at four corners, - he said with a suction and taking the spirit to himself. - In one corner, put sturgeon cheeks and vyaziga in the other, buckwheat gruel, mushrooms with onions, sweet milk, brains, and what else you know there, some kind of that. Yes, so that on one side, you know, it would be browned, and on the other, let it go easier. Yes, bake it from the bottom so that it all sucks, it would get through so that it is all, you know - not that it crumbles, but melts in your mouth like some kind of snow, so that you don’t hear…"

/N.V.Gogol, "Dead Souls"/

For a long time, an oblong pie with fish, cabbage or porridge was called kulebyaka in Russia. Not a single feast was complete at that time without pies: whether it was a chic royal feast or a modest peasant feast. They were served on Maslenitsa and Easter, in teahouses and taverns, and every housewife certainly had her own recipe for a "Russian pie"! And although this dish is no longer so popular among the general population, today the best restaurateurs in many parts of the world serve kulebyaka prepared according to old recipes, along with other dishes of Russian cuisine.

For a long time, historians mistakenly associated the origin of the name "kulebyaka" with the German "kongleback" (cabbage baked in dough) or the Finnish "kala" (fish). However, it is important to understand here that fish or cabbage was only one option from a wide variety of fillings, and therefore could not give a name to the whole pie. Now scientists say that the word "kulebyaka" could come from the Russian "kolob", that is, "small bread". Everyone remembers the tale of Kolobok, right? There is also a connection with the Little Russian "kulbaka" (saddle), by the similarity of the pie with its shape.

According to another version, which, by the way, Vladimir Ivanovich Dal adhered to, this word came from the Russian verb "kulebyachit", which meant "knead, bend, do something with your hands." And this version seems to many the most plausible, since this verb expresses all the actions that are usually performed with the test.

According to various sources, the first mention of the kulebyak refers either to the twelfth, or to the sixteenth, or even to the seventeenth century. But one thing is certain: kulebyaki in Russia were famous not only for a variety of fillings, but also for various types - open, closed, half-open, multi-layered. The latter were called chickens. The so-called "bread" pies were also known, the filling for which was made liquid, and after baking they removed the lid and offered to eat the contents with spoons.

Moreover, it was Moscow kulebyaks that gained the greatest fame, which over time became a kind of culinary symbol of the Mother See, along with sterlet fish soup and rolls. The praises of these kulebyaks were sung by such eminent gourmets of the nineteenth century as Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev, Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky and many others.

In the 19th century with light hand French culinary specialists who worked in Russia, kulebyaks gained international fame and wide recognition, so even today the name "coulibiac" can be found on the menu of many foreign restaurants. However, the latter adapted the recipe to the requirements of "haute cuisine": pies began to be prepared from more delicate "French" dough with delicious fillings of champignons, salmon, sturgeon, rice and game.

In general, kulebyaka is a traditional Russian dish, one of the types of closed pie with a complex filling. The latter is the main distinctive feature kulebyaki from other Russian pies. The filling, as a rule, is divided among themselves by layers of thin unleavened pancakes. Thus, it turns out that when cut in each piece of the pie, there are all kinds of fillings.

Another feature of the pie is the ratio of the amount of dough and filling. The dough here serves mainly as a container, so it should be thin and elastic. And the filling should end up being more than half.

Usually, the filling for kulebyaki consists of two or four types of minced meat, but here everything is limited only by the desire of the hostess and the size of the pie. For example, the chronicler of Moscow life of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, in his stories mentioned a huge kulebyak, which was served in the Testov tavern: "... in twelve tiers, each layer has its own filling: both meat and fish are different, and fresh mushrooms, and chickens, and game of all kinds."

The most common fillings for pie were usually the following:

• Boiled meat with chopped eggs, rice, onions;
• Buckwheat with boiled salmon and fried onions;
• Fried fresh cabbage with onions and mushrooms;
• River or sea fish with rice, onion and screech.

Here, perhaps, it is worth noting that screech (vyaziga) is the name of the chord eaten, extracted from sturgeon fish. The fact is that in most animals the notochord is present only during the period of embryonic development, being replaced later by the spine. In sturgeons, it persists throughout their lives. Ready-to-eat viziga is dried ribbons that swell greatly when cooked. It is in this form, finely chopped, that the squeal is usually used with some kind of fish for making kulebyak. In the 19th century, viziga was harvested in the fisheries of the Azov and Caspian Seas.

Kulebyaki differ from each other not only in the amount and types of filling, but also in the way it is laid: in tiers or "corners". And if in the first case everything is quite simple (the layers are stacked sequentially, parallel to each other), then the situation is different with the second method. The most common kulebyaki are 2, 3 and 4 corners. Many, having heard the name "kulebyaka on 4 corners", naively believe that various types of fillings are simply placed in the corners of the pie. But after all, the kulebyaka is not at all square - it is oval, and it has no corners. In addition, will it be tasty when someone gets one porridge as a filling, and another only mushrooms? In fact, such a kulebyaka is prepared with four types of filling, but they are laid out in wedges (corners) over the entire width and separated by pancakes for strength. The peculiarity of such a pie is that each piece (and even each bite) will have a different taste, due to the different ratio of minced meat in each cut.

The kulebyaka is also decorated differently. You can roll out two separate ovals from the dough, put the filling on one of them, and only then give the pie final form, "pinching" the ends of the upper and lower ovals and thus gluing both layers of dough. But most often they use another method. A cake is rolled out of the dough twice as large as the planned kulebyaka, the filling is laid out in its middle, then the edges are “pinched”, the cake is turned over with the seam down and laid out on a baking sheet previously greased or oiled.

There are a few other things to keep in mind when preparing:

• Kulebyaka is distinguished by elongated, oval shape similar to a banana. It is with this form that the filling is baked best, besides, it is convenient for cutting - providing everyone with an equal piece of the pie.
• Usually kulebyaku decorate with various dough elements: twigs, flowers, leaves, "spikelet". Kulebyaka with pork or other meat is sometimes shaped like a piglet. In this case, more flour is added to the dough from which the ears, tail and patch are made, and they are glued to the pie with the help of an egg. In the same way, you can give the cake any shape: fish, turtles, crocodile, mushroom, etc.
• Ready kulebyaka leave for 15-20 minutes for the cake to infuse.
• Before putting the cake in the oven, the surface of the pie is pierced with a fork in different places so that steam escapes during baking.
• Pie surface Brush with egg yolk before baking.

Initially, old Russian kulebyaks were prepared exclusively from yeast dough, but today it is considered acceptable to use puff or unleavened dough, and for kulebyaks with sweet filling - even rich, biscuit, shortbread and custard. However, it should be remembered here that the thickness of the layer on which the filling will be laid out also depends on the type of dough. It should not be too thick, so that after baking the dough there will not be more than the filling. The main thing is that the dough after baking retains its shape and serves only as a container and addition to the filling, and not vice versa.

All types of filling must be pre-cooked to a state of readiness or semi-readiness (depending on the density of the ingredients) and crushed to a state of pate. In this case, they will better retain their shape in the segments of the pie when it is cut. In addition, the state of the pate will create the effect of that very "melting in the mouth" that Gogol mentioned.

Before forming the kulebyaka, it is necessary to bake thin unleavened pancakes that will separate different fillings from each other, preventing them from mixing, but without interrupting the taste of the fillings themselves. Unleavened pancakes are much easier to prepare than pancakes with yeast, the ingredients for their preparation are the simplest, and very little time is spent. In addition, such pancakes will not only separate the layers of the filling of the future kulebyaka, but also will not allow the pie to be dry. So, for the preparation of pancakes-layers between the fillings of kulebyaki, we need:

• 3 glasses of milk;
• 2 cups of flour;
• 2 eggs;
• 25 g butter;
• 0.5 tsp Sahara;
• 0.5 tsp salt.

First, the yolks must be ground with salt, sugar and butter, gradually adding milk. Then also gradually add flour, strain everything through a colander and add whipped proteins. Bake in a thin frying pan greased with oil or fat. Pour a little dough so that it spreads over the pan and the pancakes are as thin as possible. Fry pancakes for 1-2 minutes on both sides.

Kulebyaka is a versatile dish. And depending on the dough and toppings, it can be served both as an appetizer (then sour cream or sour cream sauce is added to it), and as a main course, and as an addition to it (for example, instead of bread for meat, mushroom, fish broth or fish soup). Pies with meat, mushroom, fish, vegetable and cereal fillings are usually served hot, traditionally poured with ghee or sour cream, less often with any other sauce that suits your taste.

Much less often, kulebyaka is served as a dessert, since rich dough and sweet fillings are rarely used in its preparation. However, such a pie with fruits, berries, cottage cheese, poppy seeds, nuts or honey is still usually consumed with tea. In this case, kulebyaka can be served both hot and cold.