Loaf for the wedding

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

From time immemorial, a wedding has been considered a joyful, unforgettable holiday that unites two lovers, the so-called birthday of a new family, so everyone wanted everything to be just perfect on this day.

Bread has always been among the pastries decorating the festive table, as it played an important role in family rituals and was a symbol of fertility and prosperity. That is why they always baked a loaf for a wedding, the absence of which meant an inferior ceremony. They called the young to a prosperous long life.

It was made from the highest grades of flour, on which the dough was kneaded with the addition of butter and eggs. From above, pastries were decorated with cones, ducks or doves, spikelets and flowers, which were made from the same dough. And in some regions of Ukraine, a wedding loaf was dressed up with branches of fruit-bearing trees tied with red ribbons, various greens, spikelets of wheat, viburnum flowers, and berries. All this was done for several reasons. Firstly, most of the events were held in the autumn period of time, at harvest time, and secondly,secondly, viburnum and wheat symbolize strong love and prosperity. Sometimes a symbol of prosperity was tied with a towel.

Since the loaf cooked for the wedding symbolized the status of a young couple, they tried to make it large, sometimes reaching the size of a wedding table. They met the bride and groom, offering them to taste this fragrant sweet bread from the middle, which meant the birth of a new life. It was also believed that whoever tried this pastry would be lucky in everything.

It should be said that this tradition has taken root in Slavic culture. Every time we meet young loaves with various patterns and decorations, which blesses for a long family life.

Let's consider how a wedding loaf is baked.

So, for this you will need the following ingredients: eight glasses of flour, twenty grams of dry yeast, one hundred grams of butter (vegetable or melted butter), half a glass of milk, ten eggs, seven tablespoons of sugar, two tablespoons of s alt, zest of one lemon, cinnamon to taste.

Yeast, together with one spoon of sugar, is diluted in milk, yolks are added, mashed with sugar, and everything is mixed well.

Pour flour into a large container and make a depression in the middle, where the resulting yeast mass is poured, the dough is kneaded.

Pour half a glass of flour on the table, put the resulting dough and knead it well until it becomes smooth (it will take about twenty minutes in time). Thus, hisshould be two kilograms.

Before baking a wedding loaf, it is necessary to separate six hundred grams from the total dough mass, make a ball from the rest and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. This ball is smeared with water, and various decorations are molded from the remaining mass, for example, leaves, flowers, spikelets, etc., which are placed on a loaf. The surface of the whole product is smeared with yolk and baked in the oven at a high temperature at the lower level for about an hour and a half.

After that, turn off the oven, open the door and let the pastry cool. After that, it is taken out, covered with napkins and allowed to stand for one night.

Thus, a loaf at a wedding is that indispensable attribute that prophesies a long and happy life.