Zwieback, the best rolls in the world

The most important recipe my mom taught me before I got married is Zwieback, buns or rolls. You see, I live about 15 km from the nearest supermarket. If I were to rely on shopping for fresh bread, I'd be driving around all the time. But if I bake these pillowy soft rolls once or twice a week then freeze them, we can have some fresh buns on our table all week. I took pictures this week and will give you the recipe step-by-step. Here goes:

Zwieback, the Mennonite buns/rolls

1 liter of milk

Put this into a pot and let boil up once.

Add 1 cup of butter.

I put the pot with milk and butter into my sink, fill it half way full with water and let it cool down to slightly warmer than room temperature.

When the milk has cooled down, put 2 tablespoons of yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar into a large bowl, add 1 cup of slightly warmer than luke warm water and let stand for 5 minutes.

The yeast will start to bubble a bit, then you know it's done. I used instant dry yeast, but I've had the same good results with normal dry yeast and also with yeast cakes.

Add the milk/butter mixture and add 2 tablespoons of salt.

Then add flour, one cup at a time and with your kneading hooks on your beater/kitchen aid or with your bare hands, start mixing the dough together. Keep adding flour until you have a nice and soft, but not sticky dough.

I used 9 cups of flour, but you might need more of less. You can also replace some of the flour with whole wheat, sorghum, rye or any other kind of flour. I also add sesame seeds, linseeds, and/or sunflower seeds to the mixture at this point.

When the dough looks like this, you can transfer the dough to a larger bowl and knead it some more with your hands. Sometimes you might have to add some oil to your hands, so that the dough doesn't stick too much.

Then put your cutest tea towel over the dough, put it in a warm place and set your timer for about one hour.

After an hour your dough should look like this.

Now comes the tricky part: take some dough into your greased hands, and pinch an egg-sized portion out through your index finger and thumb. Place the roll on a greased sheet and fill one sheet like this.
(If you do all three sheets at once, the last sheet you bake will probably rise too much and flatten out. So I prepare the first sheet, wait 15 minutes, do the second, etc)

Place a clean (cute) tea towel over the rising buns and place in a warm spot in your kitchen. After the first batch has risen for 3/4 hour turn your oven on highest and wait for 15 minutes to place the first sheet into the hot oven.

After 12 - 15 minutes your Zwieback should look like this, and your kids and neighbors will be standing at your door asking for a fresh bun:)

Dump the fresh buns onto the counter top to cool off, then eat them all:) or package into plastic bags to freeze for later.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe. I used the terms Zwieback, rolls and buns throughout the recipe. In german we call these Zwieback. (Even though real Zwieback means to bake something twice or to roast bread) At home we called these buns, but I've heard the word used for some body part too. Rolls is what I think the Canadians and Americans would call these.

Call 'em what you like, they're good!

Thank you for joining me today for my first recipe tutorial. Here are the ingredients once more:

Zwieback

1 liter (4 cups) milk

1 cup  (200 gr) butter

2 tbsp yeast

1 tbsp sugar

1 cup warm water

2 tbsp salt

about 9 cups of flour

From Prussia to Paraguay, part 2

From Prussia to Paraguay, part 2


In Russia…

Schools:
The schools in Russia in the Mennonite colonies were held in German. Often a teacher was a craftsperson or herder, untrained but willing to fit teaching class around his occupation. In 1820 they started a secondary school in Orloff, with a teacher brought in from Prussia. More higher schools followed and those who wanted to pursue a further education attended universities in Switzerland, Germany and also in Russia.

 Churches:

Typically each village or group of villages formed an independent congregation. Each had slightly different traditions, but all believed in the fundamental Mennonite beliefs such as believer’s baptism (choosing by your own free will to be baptized, adult baptism), nonresistance (choosing not to join the military), and avoidance of oaths (“Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned.” James 5:12).

Pastors were untrained, lay-preachers, and chosen from within the congregation.

Emigration

As nationalism grew in central Europe, the Russian government couldn’t justify the special status of the German colonists any longer. In 1870 they announced a plan to “Russificate” the colonists and end all special privileges by 1880. The Mennonites were worried about losing the right to stay out of the military, their German schools and their religious and cultural life as they knew it.

They sent delegates to Petersburg, but they failed to present the czar with their petition. A year later they tried again, but to no success.

Mennonites do not want to take part in any war making, so many of them started to look for immigration options. A delegation was sent to North America in 1873 to look for fertile land, and many started leaving Russia to start again in Manitoba, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.

When the Russian government noticed that they could lose up to 40.000 of the country’s best farmers, they met with community leaders. The Russians exaggerated the difficulties that they would find in North America and offered an alternative national service, which would not be connected in any way to the military. That convinced some of the Mennonites to stay.

In 1880 the government offered the four-year forestry service plan for men of military age.

During the period of the “Great War”, the Mennonites were very prosperous and had a reputation for outstanding efficiency and were noted across Russia for their farming and organizational abilities. During World War I, 5000 Mennonite men served in both forestry and hospital units.

After the war, the conditions in Russia turned from bad to worse. Famine struck and an ex-guerilla leader turned army commander named Nestor Machno created fear in the hearts of the Mennonites.

Quote from Wiki: The image of Makhno as leader of the peasant uprising has been called "legendary" and a "colorful personality". However, in the view of the German and German Mennonite community in Ukraine, he was viewed as the instigator of "military ravages" against innocent farmers, an "inhuman monster" whose path is "literally drenched with blood.”

The Mennonites were looking for a new home. A larger migration of Mennonites from Russia occurred after World War I when in 1922-30 some 25,000 Mennonites went to Canada (21,000), Mexico, Brazil, and Paraguay. Many applied to go to Canada, but could not pass the medical exams, usually because of trachoma. The reasons for this mass migration were the threat of complete disintegration of the religious, cultural, and economic way of life of the Mennonites. A much larger number would have escaped, had not the Second World War intervened. Those that remained in their home villages were subject to exile to Siberia and other remote regions east of the Urals. From 1929 to 1940, one in eight men were removed, usually under the pretext of political accusations, to labor camps from which few ever returned or were heard from again.

So, that is how my grandparents came to Paraguay.

My aunt, Dora Dueck, wrote a wonderful fictional novel called: Under the Still Standing Sun. It describes the start of our colony in the 1930. Here’s a link to read a review of this book.

After my parents married in the 60’s, they decided to pack up their baby daughter (my big sister, Daniela) and move to Manitoba, Canada. They lived there for a total of 11 years, in which Caroline, Me and Andrea were all born there. I went to grade school in Winnipeg and later in Calgary until I was 10. Then we moved back to Paraguay. That’s why I’m “Tri-lingual” (can you say it like that?) My first language is English, because I spoke only English until we moved here. Then I quickly learned German, because that is the main language in our schools and colony here. Then I learned Spanish in school, because it’s the language spoken in Paraguay.

I hope I didn’t bore you with my history. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I’d like to post some recipes soon that our grandparents brought along from Russia. I hope you drop in again soon. Have a great weekend!

I went to the new Heritage park in town with my girls. This is one of the first trains in the Chaco. With trains similar to this one, my grandparents came to the Chaco and finished their trip from Russia to Fernheim, Paraguay on an oxcart.

From Prussia to Paraguay, part 1

Some of my readers have asked me about my heritage. It's such a long story, that I decided to make a little series of how a german/english speaking girl like me is living in Paraguayan Chaco in South America.
It all started in Prussia. Whoever is looking for Prussia on a current world map won't find it anywhere.
It was part of today's Germany and Poland.

So, here goes my story:

From Prussia to Paraguay, my heritage

My ancestors were dutch-german Anabaptists (following the teachings of Menno Simons) living in Prussia as early as 1530.

Catherine the Great from Russia invited farmers in 1763 to settle in the Ukraine. Many Mennonites were attracted to this offer, because they were encountering restrictions in living their faith. They also wanted to be excused from military service. In the years from 1787-1870 about 1907 families (8000 people) migrated to various parts of Russia, such as Chortitza, Molotschna, Samara and Vilna.

Map of the Russian Mennonite colonies in 1875. Source: http://home.ica.net/~walterunger/S-Russia.htm

Most Mennonites from this group are traditionally multilingual, with Plautdietsch (low-German) and German as their first languages.

The colonists formed villages of 15 – 30 families, and this concept is still used in our colony in Paraguay. Each farm had about 70 ha (175 acres) of land to it, and some villages had a communal plot of land for funding large projects or for use by the poor in lean years. (This is also done in one of the villages in our area.) In the beginning the Mennonites raised cattle, sheep and general crops to provide for their household. But as they got to know the land better, they diversified into growing mulberries for the silk industry, they produced honey, flax and tobacco and marketed fruits and vegetables for city markets. By 1830, wheat was their main crop.

Quote by wiki:

“Expanding population and the associated pressure for more farmland became a problem by 1860. The terms of the settlement agreement prevented farms from being divided; they were required to pass intact from one generation to the next. Since agriculture was the main economic activity, an expanding class of discontented, landless poor arose. Their problems tended to be ignored by the village assembly, which consisted of voting landowners. By the early 1860s the problem became so acute that the landless organized a party that petitioned the Russian government for relief. A combination of factors relieved their plight. The Russian government permitted farms to be divided in half or quarters and ordered release of the village's communal land. The colonies themselves purchased land and formed daughter colonies on the eastern frontier extending into Siberia and Turkestan. These new colonies included Bergtal, Neu Samara Colony and the Mennonite settlements of Altai.

As wheat farming expanded, the demand for mills and farm equipment grew. The first large foundry was established in Chortitza in 1860 and other firms followed. By 1911 the eight largest Mennonite-owned factories produced 6% of the total Russian output (over 3 million rubles), shipped machinery to all parts of the empire and employed 1744 workers. The annual output of Lepp and Wallman of Schönwiese was 50,000 mowers, 3000 threshing machines, thousands of gangplows in addition to other farm equipment. Flour and feed mills were originally wind-powered, a skill transplanted from Prussia. These were eventually replaced with motor and steam driven mills. Milling and its supporting industries grew to dominate the industrial economy of the colonies and nearby communities.”



To be continued...