History of gingerbread

In Russia, gingerbread has long been considered an attribute of the holiday, because its ingredients were not cheap and everyday. The first gingerbread, most likely, were round and were simple pastries made from a mixture of rye flour with berry juice and honey. The word "gingerbread" itself comes from the word "spices". In the confectionery industry, a set of gingerbread spices is still called “dry perfume”. These were the seeds of fragrant herbs: ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, cardamom, which are certainly added to the dough.

The first written mention of honey cakes with spices appears around 350 BC. What we today call gingerbread was eaten with pleasure by the ancient Egyptians and Romans. In Russia, gingerbread was called "honey bread", and it appeared on the menu somewhere in the 9th century, after the arrival of the Vikings. Then it was a mixture of rye flour with honey and berry juice, and honey in gingerbread made up almost half of all ingredients.

Honey cakes also went down in history under the name "Lebkuchen" (Christmas gingerbread) - these gingerbread in the form we know today were originally invented in Belgium in the city of Dinant.

Gingerbread was served both at the royal table and in boyar mansions; they were also baked in peasant houses. As a reward and as a keepsake, honorary gingerbread was baked by special order - sometimes they weighed several pounds. In the 17-19 centuries, especially after the emancipation of the peasants, baking gingerbread in Russia became a common craft. Tula, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Vyazma, Gorodets, Moscow and Tver gingerbreads were especially famous.

There were printed, stucco and carved gingerbread. Printed gingerbread was made using wooden forms - gingerbread boards, which were cut out of linden, birch, pear and superimposed on the dough, imprinting an embossed image on it.

Cut out gingerbread cookies were made using metal molds, with which figures were cut out of dark honey dough. After baking, such gingerbreads were decorated with patterns of white, pink and even golden icing. Initially, glaze painting was done with a stick; modern craftswomen have replaced it with a parchment horn. The contour of large gingerbread cookies was cut out without a shape, just with a knife.

Modeled gingerbreads were most common in the North in the Arkhangelsk region. They were made without the help of molds, molded by hand, sometimes not even from gingerbread dough, but from plain bread. The most common forms were horses, birds, deer. All these figurines were called by the same name - roes, which in the local dialect means “snake, curl”. In the old days they said: "Without a roe, a holiday is not a holiday." Roe deer were usually baked at Christmas time on New Year's Eve.

Gingerbread has long been a symbol of the New Year and Christmas. They were put out the windows on holidays, they were generously presented to caroling children. The motifs of pagan mythology and pictures of Russian life are mixed in the plots of urban gingerbread.

After the advent of technology for the production of relatively inexpensive beet sugar in the 18th century, baking gingerbread with sugar became a prestigious business. This novelty pushed honey more and more into the background, and finally sugar completely replaced it. At the same time, the quality of gingerbread worsened, because. the replacement of honey could not replace all the properties of a natural product collected by a bee from the nectar of flowers, herbs and trees. And not only because the gingerbread lost its honey flavor. The main thing is that sugar lacks the complex of enzymes and other bioactive substances that natural honey has. It is thanks to honey enzymes that the gingerbread acquires a unique taste, aroma and freshness.

Flour for gingerbread and gingerbread in different areas was taken both rye and wheat, or a mixture of them in any proportions. Natural bee honey. Of course, later Russian bakers inevitably began to use sugar, but in the best examples, its share has never been predominant. Instead of sugar, various syrups were often introduced - mint, orange, rosehip. Used to add to the dough and fermented or candied jam, previously rubbed through a sieve for uniformity.

Gingerbread manufacturing technology

Depending on the technology of dough preparation, gingerbread is divided into custard and raw. The technological scheme for the production of custard gingerbread at confectionery plants and factories is approximately as follows:

The prepared syrup from sugar, honey and / or molasses is loaded at a certain (rather high) temperature into a kneading machine, flour is also fed there. This raw material is kneaded until a homogeneous mass is obtained, which is called "brewing". It is cooled and mixed with all other raw materials provided for in the recipe in the same kneading machine.

The dough prepared in this way is molded on various machines or manually by means of metal recesses. In this case, the dough is pre-rolled to the required thickness of the layer.

After that, the blanks are baked in a conveyor oven and cooled, and then they are loaded into a rotating glazing machine and poured over with a specially prepared sugar syrup. After that, the gingerbread cookies are dried in an oven and stand until the sugar crystallizes, after which the gingerbread cookies with a marble top surface are transferred to the packaging area.

The technological scheme for the production of raw gingerbread differs from the scheme for the production of custard gingerbread only in the way the dough is prepared. Instead of brewing flour in syrup, all the raw materials provided for in the recipe are loaded into the kneading machine in a certain sequence and mixed. In addition, certain varieties of raw gingerbread are not glazed.

Previously, in the practice of the work of old masters, the shelf life of tea leaves was estimated at several months - it was believed that when the dough was aged, the taste qualities of custard gingerbread improved. The conducted studies have established that during the curing of the dough, indeed, some biochemical processes associated with the vital activity of enzymes occur. In particular, a slight hydrolysis of proteins and a slight increase in the amount of invert sugar under the influence of enzymes. But these biochemical processes that take place in the brew during aging do not have a noticeable effect on the quality of gingerbread, except for the enhancement of the honey flavor of gingerbread made with buckwheat honey. Therefore, long-term curing of welding is not a justified technological stage and is practically not used at present.

The production of gingerbread with fruit filling is practiced, which is added to the dough or to cut baked gingerbread. Some varieties of small gingerbread are glued with fruit filling.

Gingerbread and gingerbread are also produced, the surface of which is smeared with an egg, sprinkled with sugar, crumbs, chopped nuts or almonds, decorated with raisins, candied fruit or nut kernels. All these operations are carried out with the molded dough before baking.