Today we will learn to drink bread.

Dziś nauczymy się pić chleb.

I first read the recipe three or four years ago and the comments successfully discouraged me from trying – the girl wrote she had a big diet Coke & Mentos experience just by opening it. And a lot of painting in the house. But then two weeks ago a guy on wykop.pl made his own. More than that, someone else provided a video with a recipe that couldn’t get much simpler.

With a few tiny alterations like baking my own bread, I made this wonderful live drink.

Note: you are making a live drink with yeast in it. It will be alcoholic. Not much, but a bit. You’ve been warned.

Note2: You don’t need to make the bread. The guy that inspired me bought dark bread at Biedronka (kind of like Lidl or Aldi) and it was fine. It’s advisable that the bread has rye and malt in it.

Kvass

Planning

I made bread and used it, it took about a day: 12 hours soaking the seeds, 12 hours from mixing to baking, then 12 hours resting before slicing. I did not wait for the bread to get hard and old. You can skip this step.

Making kvass takes time, but not much attention. The first steps take about 10 minutes in the evening, then waiting overnight, then putting it in the jars and waiting for two days.

You will need some glass jars, preferably with a glass lid. They need to be clean and have no cracks – we’ll be creating some pressure here. You’ll also need something to drain it through, like a coffee filter or a cloth (or preferably a gauze from a pharmacy – my impression is that the cloth removes too much carbon dioxide). And two pans, a strainer.

Bread

As a base for this recipe, I used the simple rye bread. I did however add malt to it – I used malted rye grain and barley malt syrup.

Ingredients

Makes three loaves around 1100 g each. For less, you’ll need to do the maths. I’m leaving the pretty numbers here.

The soaker

• 150 g malted rye grain
• 50 g barley malt syrup
• 300 g water

The dough

• 1100 g wholemeal rye flour
• 1100 g water
• 350 g rye sourdough
• 150 g oat flakes
• 150 g sunflower
• 10 g caraway seeds
• 35 g salt
• The soaker

Preparation

1. About 12 hours before baking mix the soaker ingredients and leave covered with cling film so that the water doesn’t evaporate
2. Mix the bread ingredients. They will form a dense, sticky, clay-like dough
3. Put it into greased baking tins and give it 8-12 hours to rise
4. Bake in 160 C with a fan or 180 without for 70 minutes. Know your oven. Add steam
5. Carefully take the loaves out of the pans and return them into the oven for 5-10 more minutes to form a better crust
6. Leave it to cool down for about 12-24 hours. It is very moist and will leave more crumb on the knife if you don’t wait

A post shared by Breadcentric (@breadcentric) on Jun 23, 2017 at 8:39am PDT

Kvass

This is the video I used as a recipe source. Only skipped the last step and didn’t add lemon juice (it got too sour the first time I made it).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1UTJKBMvgc][/youtube]

Now that we’ve got bread, we’ll need two or three slices and can get going. I recommend starting in the evening.

Ingredients

Will make a bit more than a big Kilner jar. I put the rest into a smaller jar and gave it away.

• 1.5 l water
• 3 rye bread slices
• A couple slices of lemon
• A couple raisins (You’ll need them twice)
• 100 g sugar
• A teaspoon of dry yeast

Preparation

1. Toast the bread slices to get them well roasted

   

   Roasted rye bread for kvass

2. Boil the water. Take it off the heat

3. Add the toasts, slices of lemon and a couple washed raisins into the water and cover overnight. In the morning it should have a weird smell

   

   Note: It is difficult to make pictures with a lot of steam.

4. Pour the extract into another pan through a strainer to remove the big things. Add sugar, yeast and mix until they dissolve

5. Pour into the jars (I needed a big one and a small one), add more washed raisins and close

6. Leave in a warm place for two days. Over that time you will see it release bubbles of carbon dioxide

   A post shared by Breadcentric (@breadcentric) on Jun 25, 2017 at 11:14pm PDT

7. Pour it through a coffee filter or a kitchen cloth to remove all the little things

   A post shared by Breadcentric (@breadcentric) on Jul 2, 2017 at 12:08am PDT

8. Refrigerate until it’s nice and cold

9. Enjoy

I just don’t know why Boris added lemon juice. Probably different taste preferences.

Anyway, I love the fizz on a tongue and the slightly acidic, but quite sweet flavour. It is very refreshing, and possibly tad stronger than I thought it would be. Way better than the one from store.