Long Bread Lines or Why Didn't Soviet People Make Their Own Bread?
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- Bread situation in the USSR. Buying bread in the Soviet Union. Food supply in the USSR. Soviet bread lines.
The video addresses the question of whether Soviet people baked their own bread in the Soviet Union.
The video also explores the possibility of making bread at home to save money, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The video discusses the challenges and options for making bread at home in the Soviet Union.
0:00 Intro
0:27 The video discusses the topic of bread in the Soviet Union and whether people baked their own bread.
3:26 The video discusses the reasons why the Soviets didn't make their own bread, focusing on the affordability of heavily subsidized bread and the challenges of obtaining ingredients.
7:09 The video discusses the significant price difference between bread and butter in the Soviet Union, due to heavy government subsidies on bread.
10:56 The video discusses the Soviet Union's attempt to boost wheat production and the challenges they faced.
14:48 Collective farm workers faced challenges due to an aging workforce, low pay, and lack of modern equipment, leading to decreased output.
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Could you do a video on Kvass please?
@@BM-979 ua-cam.com/video/E2gH4cX34qs/v-deo.html
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What's the intro melody called?
@@randylahey1822 ua-cam.com/video/T99UWQpJynY/v-deo.htmlsi=XTB8vlM8VTcLMcAV
@@UshankaShow - Hello, Sergey.
Could you make a video about *PRIVATE OWNERSHIP AFTER* the USSR collapse?
I am curious about how it's possible that some people became oligarchs AFTER the ussr dissolved and how some remained in poverty.
There are articles online that describe what happened to state-owned factories, that their ownership went to the employees who worked there for many years, etc., but it's not simplified and I feel that only YOU could best describe how it all happened since you were there when *the* USSR dissolved.
People in the Soviet Union used margarine? Funnily in Quebec for many decades the color of the margarine was regulated by law, it needed to be more pale to make it less attractive than butter.
Yes, we had margarine. USSR imported as lot of palm oil even in the 80s
good margarine is heart poison.
@@UshankaShow You’re a legend Sergei 😎. You should watch king of the hill.
Margarine back when it had trans fat 😬
The dairy farmers in the US have been battling margarine
since the 19th century. Some states demanded it be dyed
pink to make it look bad. During WW2 they sold pale white
oleo with a dye packet to mix in to make in look better.
In English if you say, "your english (or cooking, craftsmanship, etc) isnt half bad" its a compliment that means you do a good job
It's still kind of patronizing considering he has been in the US longer than some of his viewers have been alive
@@hyperion3145 Yeah, it might be less patronizing to say, "I wish I could speak Russian as well as you speak English." But even that can be said in an offensive manner if you work at it.
@@hyperion3145And yet he doesn't know this phrase.. Oh the irony.
@@OhFishyFish I believe he does know the phrase, but he simply chose to reply with a provocative counter-attack.
@@HeathenDance To a copliment.
That's a question only someone who grew up post SU could ask. All grain was taken away by the Central Government to be "redistributed". And it wasn't a lack of people. All machines belonged to a machine shop at first but then the machine shops were dissolved and each collective had to buy their own equipment - they couldn't afford it and even if they could, they didn't know how to service agricultural machines. It was one kneejerk decision after another that came down from the top and destroyed the structure that held up everything.
that is how socialism works. it just keeps destroying everything.
yes I'm very curious how this even becomes a question any more.
The factual stories have to be repeated on occasion to keep the younger people informed.
@@richardkammerer2814 correct!
Dogmatic thinking. This is the case today in every instance where someone sells their labour for a wage. Agricultural workers, (the people doing the tilling, planting, pruning, weeding, and reaping) don't own their own land or get to keep what they grow, at least those working for large landowning companies, which is nearly all of them, and the petty landowners in exception are growing more and more economically marginalized, forced to either sell out or find other means to subsist financially. This was one part of the enclosure movements in the UK and elsewhere. Small landowners (functionally peasants, whether they were allowed to move around or not before enclosure is not relevant) were forced off of their land by economic marginalization (can't keep up with economies of scale, new mega farm is taking up all the stream water, etc). Failing that, oftentimes forced off by the state on the behalf of a large landowning agricultural firm that can use the land more efficiently in order to feed the growing cities. This would also conveniently provide workers for the factories. Only a relatively few people need to stay behind because of drastic increases in productivity. Excellent for the profits of the factory bosses and large landowners, but an unprecedented moral and humanitarian disaster for nearly everyone else. A long period of war over resources and markets, hunger due to inequitably or irresponsibly established distribution networks, and disease both old and new (like phossy jaw) hung like a miasma over the cities who were centers of industrial development for over a century as the recently destitute flowed into the cities leaving behind land ripe for the monocropping. This is the process by which a society's economic base develops from mainly agrarian to mainly manufacturing.
The same process that fueled the people to and into the factories and mines in England and Wales played out again in the Soviet Union, but at a pace which intended to prepare for war by getting 50 years of industrial development done in only 10. The NEP kept the small landlords in order to temporarily stabilize the economy and political situation. However, by 1928, this and other feudally backwards practices still present throughout the countryside were stifling the growth of the rest of the economy Union wide. They didn't have decades to wait for wealth to accumulate, so the planners decided to advance 50 years of agricultural technology in only 5. Though the unimaginable immediate human cost threatened to completely annihilate the
One interesting change between eras is that the economic planners during Stalin's tenure measured economic success based on: quality of good, quantity of good, profit in currency, change in labor power over time necessary to produce said good to meet growth targets, etc but you get the idea it's a qualitative and quantitative approach . However, the planners starting with Khrushchev's liberalization scheme began to mainly view economic success based on marginal profit. Some problems were solved, like shortages in manpower needed to plan such a vast and diverse economy, and economic liberalization led to better staffing of the professions. Other problems, like corruption, the trend towards gerontocracy, and long run economic mismanagement were exacerbated.
Lastly, it's misleading to refer to changes in the amount of agricultural produce for Russia, considering in the 80s it was 50 years into a particularly turbulent industrial revolution, the large growth in crop yields could be explained in many more plausible ways for a society still in recovery than vague gesturing at whole political-economic systems. Russia could have produced more wheat, but it didn't need to spend the labor to meet people's needs with present production (at least until near the end due to economic confusion with the end of the enforcement of economic planning). For example, the monopolization of previously state or communal property going for cheap and a hungry industrial+professional workforce selling their labor in the fields in exchange for a wage or at least a meal. Foreign and expat investment came pouring in once individuals were allowed to scoop the surplus value from people's work, and employment was cheap. The previous economy required extensive planning by hand to even lurch forward (because Khrushchev killed the supercomputer planning project that cybersyn would later vindicate) nevermind run. If we're looking at an economy as only the material resources within it and use only one currency as a medium of exchange I bet it would run mildly ok on a GPU.
My friend did a stint in morocco in the peace corp. I was horrified what she told me. The men did nothing and the woman would bake bread all day. Twice a day they would bake bread and when they are not, they are cleaning. One of the thing was they buy prepackage yeast from France. I asked her, why don't they keep a starter instead, and she shrugged at that. If you bake bread alot, you don't need to buy yeast, but create a starter so you don't need it.
Fascinating. Almost the whole history of the Soviet Union through the microcosm of bread. Simple question of why people in USSR did not bake their own bread, and the answer leads to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Wild.
Yes. In slovakia bread was cheaper then flour. We put bread to pigs because was cheaper then veg, potato, anything.
in rural hungary most homes didn't have ovens, but most villages had a communal oven that was heated 2 or 3 times a week, you would bring your pre-made dough from home to the bakery and bake it there. that's how langos became popular for making bread on days when the bakery was closed.
That sounds like true 'commune' ism - or cooperativsm if you all 'own it' and share it's costs and benefits
@@TotalFreedomTTT-pk9stin most of the world bread making is a communal affair. From a fuel standpoint (wood or gas or dung!) it's more efficient to have a single oven large enough to bake for a neighborhood.
You see this in rural areas of Arab world and South Asia. One village bakery.
@@willbass2869 I actually use a microwave oven to cook my bread but someone I talked with had mentioned that you really need very high temperatures to fully 'cook' the bread - I live alone and I reckon with more people you could just use an oven - There are 'economies of scale' that a neighborhood could use - like having a neighborhood tennis court or swimming pool or wood chipper - IF you had healthy non lazy non cheating productive neighbors otherwise it will not work thanx for the reply
That was true in some parts of Spain because it saved on fuel.
Mhmm....Langos as an Austrian kid of the 70's Langos was something you got at the fair, Christmas market or the amusement park.
If you make sourdough bread, you never need to buy yeast. Just need flour, water, salt, and a jar to keep a wild yeast culture. It takes a couple days for it to start growing, but it's delicious!
True. Wild yeast is everywhere. It's usually not as active as store bought powder, but if you have time it's free.
You still need flour to feed it....
I live on the Great Lakes. I remember Soviet flagged ships going to Superior or Thunder Bay to haul wheat. I always thought it was strange to see the “enemy’s” ships pass by.
The USA made money on the deal and if the people of the USSR began to starve, that would lead to war which wouldn't have ended well for the world.
US government was very pro-communist while the military branch was very anti communist. Which is why they’re were both our enemies and we did everything to prop them up.
9:25 The big spike in grain prices in 1973-74 that you see on the chart was caused by the 1973 United States-Soviet Union wheat deal. The Soviet Union was allowed to buy 10 million tons of American grain on credit for subsidized prices and caused global grain prices to spike.
10:17 Jimmy Carter did try a grain embargo on the Soviet Union in 1980 as a protest against their invasion of Afghanistan. It upset American farmers due to the lower grain prices they were receiving. It also upset the KGB who ordered their agents to try to discredit Carter and support Reagan during the 1980 Presidental elections since Reagan promised to end the embargo if he became President. He did end it in 1981 after taking office. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union compensated for the embargo by buying more grain from South America.
I'm guessing the KGB also wasn't happy about Carter boycotting the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow and convincing other countries to do the same.
@@TheyMostlyComeAtNight I'm sure that move didn't win him any points with the Soviet government either.
Grain embargos are so easy to circumvent.
Funny story.....
A few years ago the Chinese govt restricted wheat& soy imports from the US. They increased Argentine purchases. Pretty soon Argentina was running out of soy/wheat.
So......on one side of the Argentine port grain freighters from US unloaded and then by conveyor and truck the grain was moved to other side of port for Chinese vessels to load up. I think Argentina sold something like 200% of their annual harvest in 6 months! Lol
At some point people need to learn you can't (effectively) embargo commodities.
73-74 wheat price spike was caused by spike of oil price. At that time US was not producing enough domestic oil and was badly hurt by oil embargo after Yom Kippur War.
One thing to note: Once the USSR started buying huge amounts of grain on the world market, both the US government and several vast agricultural companies would watch for that and drive up the price. This did a couple of things for those in the west. First it made HUGE profits for the companies who purchased the grain on the cheap and then sell it at a massive markup. Second, the US Government used various means to determine when the USSR was going to enter the market and leak that data to industry partners as part of economic warfare. Since the USSR had no choice to purchase, this was one of the ways the USA could harm the USSR economy and boost the US economy.
Any source for that? Ideally, not Russian State Propaganda that says people in the UK are eating squirrels due to their economic crash.
And why would the US do that, then send Russia 30 billion in total aid during the 1990s, including:
- 1 million tons of wheat for human consumption
- 1.5 million tons of wheat for livestock
- 1.5 million tons of corn
- 1 million tons of soymeal and soya beans
- 15,000 tons of corn and vegetable seeds
So they drove up prices…to send billions free? (My source is the US Congressional records and reports, Google IS food aid to Russia 1990s)
Seems like keeping an eye on the stock market trends to get the upper hand, slimy but effective.
Recently the same thing happened with 'Game Stop' stocks, once a large group of citizens (4chan and redditors) tried to do what the US oligarchy already does the government stepped in and put a stop to it.
Can't have the people getting an ounce of power.
Of course, now Russia is a major exporter of grains. The US can try to manipulate prices but real control lies elsewhere. The Russians even give grain to Africa for free. And the great agricultural reformer? Putin. One reason sanctions aren't worth the paper they are written on.
How was this harming the USSR? To harm it the USA would have just banned exports from NATOs countries and let the Soviet Union implode.
This is a complete lie. We're you taught this at a woke American school or are you just one of those people? Grain was and is a global product where most of it is NOT grown in the US. The US consumed most of its grain and its impact on global prices was not large. And grain was and is sold into markets by small companies or farmers with only a few large supplier. The brokers like Cargill did have an impact but it wasn't substantial. The price went up because the Soviet demand was so massive.
Why are you marxist kids so stupid?
In rural or semirural Central Asia tandyr ovens were common and people preferred to bake it themselves. It was possible to give your flour and a couple of roubles to receive a "subscription" of bread from a local baker. It would be delivered by his child
Tandoor. It is just a Persian word for coal oven. Naan is the name of the bread that was made in such ovens.
isn't naan just a word for "bread"@@pmaitrasm
@@pmaitrasm You realize the word is different in different languages, right? 'Tandyr" is correct in many languages, like Kazakh and Kyrgyz; in Turkish it's "tandir". All of them (including the Persian and English versions) come from the Akkadian "tinūru" originally.
@@flingonber, From what I know, it originates in Arabic tannūr, so I used the spelling tandoor, which seems to be more accurate than using a y, which does not indicate what vowel sound to use.
@@flingonber in Turkmen it would be tamdyr. And to my surprise, this tradition still lives on there.
In modern USA the big subsidies go to sources of grain. Most of that going to animal feed. A farmer told me he sells his corn below cost of production in exchange for a large subsidy. This is to keep the cost of meat down.
Indeed, sad that supposedly capitalist countries are doing the same thing as socialist countries did.
@@HNedel I don't know if it is sad or not, and I'd make a distinction between socialist and communist countries, but both show the need to feed the people.
And, there are two different causes behind these subsidies. For communist Soviet Union, they weren't able to deliver enough income for people to afford unsubsidized bread, whereas in capitalist America, they want to keep the price of meat down to avoid forcing the people to recognize the cost.
@@janerkenbrack3373 nothing is free, the subsidies are paid for by the taxpayers anyway. And subsidies often lead to distortions such that the beneficiaries are not the “poor” people but the wealthy big farm corporations that have the scale to utilize the subsidies and comply with all the regulations. Meanwhile small farms are at a disadvantage and go under.
@@HNedel Right. I didn't mean to imply that subsidies are free if you took that from my comments.
And yes, subsidies help the wealthy, mostly. Though the farmer I know who described his operation isn't "wealthy" like the big guys. So there are small operators taking advantage of the subsidies.
The consumption of meat has become an American right, and the true cost of raising it would greatly affect the average consumer. They would either have to drastically cut back on meat consumption, or make some financial sacrifices in other areas to make up the difference.
If they did cut back on meat, it would cause harm to the meat producers, but it would greatly benefit the health of the consumer as well as the planet.
The beef, port, poultry, and dairy industries have huge lobbying arms, and the politicians understand what sharp increases of meat prices would do to public sentiment. So I expect the subsidies will continue.
@@HNedelunfortunately not. By subsidizing the farmers and not the consumers the people pay twice. First in taxes to pay the farmer twice in wages when they actually buy the meat. It’s the worst of both worlds.
One thing most people don't know is the dairy industry in the US is one of the most heavily subsidized industries we have. If the subsidies went away, a pack of butter would cost $30.
food prices in 2023 -> 2024 are ridiculous relative to median income as it is in the US. breads / dairy products are heavily subsidized you are correct (and possibly beef/chicken). if these subsidies disappeared we'd have a massive wave of chronic persistent hunger if not outright starvation. and when parents can't feed their children that's fertile grounds for "viva la revolution". So the subsidies won't go away anytime soon.
In Quebec, government done 4 things. Disallows external milk in province; Subsidize farmers; "Before shelf" 50% crazy milk tax; Implement price controls. This benevolence created even more government in the Cheese Industry.
wild when you have machines to make your own at home, take the subsidies and give them to me instead lol
That seems strange. Why is butter production so expensive in the US?
@@ian_b Don't just assume that statement is correct. It might be, it might not be. Sounds too high to be true.
A large supply of cheap bread can be used to make alcohol. Beer can easily be made from bread and beer can be distilled to make alcohol. Yeast is no problem, you can capture live yeast from the air quite easily. It seems that something like a market for cheap bread would just help create many black markets for any use for bread, like you said, animal food. Most any animal can eat bread. A large supply of heating fuel would be needed to operate a distillery.
You can make prison wine by fermenting juice by stuffing bread slices into the bottle to add the yeast for conversion of sugar to alcohol and burping it occasionally
@@spaffyjimble2317 ahh, yes....nothing like a plastic bag full of pruno!
Why bother if you have cheap sugar
The book Merchants of Grain talks about how the USA loaned the USSR money and even subsidized shipping of wheat so the USSR could maintain control over their satellite states in the hope they would have their proxies in Vietnam fight us less aggressively. It was nuts.
The one by Dan Morgan, or a different Merchants of Grain book?
It was nuts, and the working poor paid the price over there.
I remember the Russian wheat deal.
It was pure stupid,like giving all your industry to China.
Yep. In many places, it is almost always cheaper (sometimes substantially cheaper) to buy bread than to make it from scratch.
It is true that time is money, but if people are short of the latter, they’ll endure whatever to make and use more of the former.
It only makes sense to incur the expense of making bread for special occasions, to resell or, God forbid, as a matter of survival.
Yeah, I make most of my own bread because I enjoy it, but it's not particularly economical, even buying the ingredients in bulk like I do. It is less expensive for me in terms of materials, I've calculated it out and the baguettes I make cost about $0.46/each, but it also takes about six hours. It's low effort, since most of the time is letting it rise, but you do have to be around so that you can do things to the dough at regular intervals. I work from home so it's not a problem but lots of people don't have the luxury of that much time.
Where exactly are these places where flour is more expensive than bread? Can you actually cite where and why flour would be sold for more than the equivalent unit for bread? Bread is just flour, water, yeast...Everywhere I've seen it's cheaper to make it if you exclude labor cost/opportunity cost. Labor is the only reason bread is "cheaper" to buy then make.
@@Inspectorzinn2 I'm not the OP but I can break it down for you since, as I mentioned in my response, I bake bread regularly. A standard loaf of bread (based on a standard loaf pan size) takes about a pound of flour and one packet of yeast. A quick look at the cheapest of my local grocery stores (Fred Meyer, it's called Meijer in some parts of the country among other names) shows that 10 lbs of flour is $5 and a pack of three packets of yeast is $2.29 - these are the cheapest store brands. If you do the math, that comes out to $1.26 cost per loaf, not including salt which is a negligible cost. The cheapest loaf of bread that they sell is a 20 oz loaf, so 25% larger than a one-pound loaf, and is $1.29. If you break it down by ounce rounded to the nearest cent, that comes out to $0.08/oz for the homemade bread and $0.06/oz for the store-bought bread.
You can get that down lower by buying in bulk like I do, if you're willing to buy (and properly store, which is a not insignificant logistical consideration) 50 pound bags of flour and buy a pound or more of yeast at a time. I typically makes baguettes and the same quantities of flour and yeast make two half-pound baguettes for $0.46/each, or $0.92 total for one pound, which comes out to $0.06/oz. So if you're willing to go through all of that, store 50 pounds of flour at a time, and spend six hours a day making bread, you'll save...nothing, you come out to the same cents per ounce. On the plus side, the bread is much better?
@@flingonber I'm going to argue your math is off, a pound of flour will create a much heavier loaf due to water weight. Try weighing the finished loaf and then compare the weight to the store loaf. The yeast is also extremely overpriced. At Sam's club I can buy 100+ loaves worth of yeast ((32oz) for $6 and 25lbs of flour for $10. (and you can verify price with a quick google search). That's less than a dollar per "1lb loaf" and no 25lbs doesn't take much space.
As for labor, let me introduce you to the Hamilton Beach Bread Maker. I got mine for less than $80 new but I've also found plenty of higher quality bread makers for less than $20 at thrift shops like Goodwill. It takes less than one minute to load it with ingredients. A few hours later you have bread with zero work. So yeah, a visit to Sam's club and thrift store and you are cranking out loaves for less than what it costs at the grocery store with zero skill and labor.
Interesting video. The part where you address the import of grain by the USSR starting in the mid-60s let to higher international grain prices in the early 70s. My Canadian family had a mid-sized hog and grain farm, but when the prices rose so much we got rid of the hogs and just focused on grains. We made so much more money in the 70s that we bought more land and new equipment. Good times, all caused by the demand for bread by the Soviet people.
I am guessing that people did made bread in Russia as well but not in the cities. The thing is that when you live in rural areas every house (at least here in Finland) has a huge ass oven (and huge ass table as well!) that we use to both heat the house and after house is heated it is perfect for making bread as well. And amount of bread that is made in one day or two last for 2 to 3 months. Have to have some place to store them. My mom for example does not make bread during the summer. It is way too hot for that. She makes it during the spring for the coming summer.
But if you live in an apartment it's a big hassle. Especially if the price of the bread is very low.
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@@UshankaShow Looks like quite identical what we got here 🙂
how do you keep it that long? Freezer? ordinary soviet people didn't have those
@@Blackadder75There is this thing called "maakellari" (root cellar) that helps a lot. But yeah, without the freezer probably once a week is a nice period. Flour will stay ok for months. Also ryebread stays better for longer than "white bread".
Also there is no need for yeast. You just reuse the root of the previous bread batch.
Now it must be the second and third generation without mother at home.
Same in Bulgaria during communism. Bread was heavily subsidized and dirt cheap. In the country side, people were buying it and feeding their animals with it.
Your English is perfectly understandable, although spoken with an accent that marks you as a non native speaker of American English. That is quite common in the United States, and ordinarily no one would make any comment about it ----simply accepting your spoken English as being fine.
And I find your occasional examples of Russian or Ukrainian words to be interesting ----thank you!
And I found your explanations of how we average people coped with life at different times, facing varying problems, to be interesting as well. And the government seems to be perpetually trying to deal with the issues people create.
These days here in Seattle, local "food banks" are open two or three days per week, and anyone who cares to can come in a get food at no cost. Fruit, vegetables, baked goods, bread and meats are commonly available in quantities suitable for a couple or a family.
A decade or more ago, people could take as much bread as they wished, but just as you describe, that led to waste and abuse. I often saw people feeding numerous loaves of bread to wild geese around here, which became overpopulated and a nuisance.
People! We have endless antics to entertain ourselves!
Yeah, that's what he said; it's not half bad. It's a compliment.
I entertain myself by watching failed experiments designed to "help the poor" turn into drug addict city squalor. Mostly in cities like Seattle, Portland, SF. Keep creating the drug dens, and I'll continue to laugh at you.
Yes I also love watching this channel, because his ("Sergio"?) English is perfectly understandable, and the accent just adds to the authenticity. The word comparisons between Russian and Ukrainian language are also interesting.
"I speak English because it is the only language I know that you know. You speak English because it is the only language you know."
Some Americans themselves have terrible regional accents, marginally understandable by someone who learned the language from a proper officially spoken English.
I do remember bread being heavily subsidized in Poland too. Milk was also subsidized, but milk products, like butter or cream were not. Actually, butter and cream were considered a luxury. Was it similar in Soviet Union?
Even here in the free west butter was seen as more luxurious than cheaper substitutes, sure everybody could buy it if they wanted, there was no shortage (in fact there was a surplus) but many didn't to save money. My parents only bought butter for special occasions, the rest of the year we ate margarine. This was as late as the 80s. As a child I didn't even like the taste of butter because I was not used to it.
Practically, due to clozed internal market, all the food and "socially important" services were subsidized, and more "social impact" product/service had, more affordable it was for the peoples. Even luxuries like caviar been subsidized for internal market. (ofc, not in same scale as bread, milk, eggs, or public transportration services)
And yes, this approach lead to defficite for every commodity in long run. Results known.
Butter was subsidized till mid 70's , cream was just not available retail. Butter changed prices with meat in 1976. With meat becoming cheap and butter becoming expensive, but you couldn't buy meat because it was always unnavailable (except for rabbit and spatchcock).
I love hearing about life in the USSR. It totally changes the perspective of my own childhood and current standing. It’s a shame 20th century history isn’t taught in schools.
You don't need industrialized yeast to make bread. Wild yeasts can be made simply from flour.
I think this is pretty common for urban/industrialized area to lose the tradition of using wild yeast. But again, if you can get it cheap in the store, then there's no reason for you to make your own bread outside of sentimental reasons I guess.
You can, but the results are pretty unpredictable. That's why you see sourdough starters that have been kept alive for hundreds of years...once someone got something that worked well, it was worth maintaining it carefully because you knew more or less what you were going to get. Making a fresh starter without adding yeast is basically just rolling the dice and hoping for the best.
Yep, same with fermentation of drinks like beer and wine, I use wild yeast that I have captured and cleaned from an earlier batch of wine to ensure it tastes the way I like and know how it will act. The good news is even if you get something that tastes "weird" it's generally at least safe to eat/drink excluding spoilage and whatnot.
Well rationing is a PITA, so that would be another reason.
Yeast wasn't the main reason, it cost more to buy flour then to buy bread.
You can also make it with potato water.
When the USSR developed the basics for food industrialization in the 1930s they got it from the States. They sent people to examine the Food Factories such as industrial bakeries, took notes and sent reports to Stalin.
Love your work!
Not so keen on the "realistic" AI generated images. I'm sure Elon Musk and Tom Cruise appeared in one of them.
Must be hard finding enough images, but repeats are probably better than the twee AI generated stuff.
Still love your content though.
Very interesting video. Thank you. I have also heard that the logistics system of collecting, transporting, storing, and distributing grains was a disaster in the Soviet Union. From what I read, there appears to have been great amounts of waste and spoilage due to the underdeveloped system. It is like a bunch of technocrats in Moscow made orders, yet never understanding how things worked, were always surprised at how small the yields in the granaries were. Furthermore, many farmers were more interested in maintaining their private and usually illegal gardens to supplement their meager rations and empty store shelves.
Not only that a limited supply of stuff per year.
Politicians still don't seem to know how the real world works.
IIRC, Soviet agriculture and biological sciences were tragically also set back decades (at least fifty years, by some estimates) in the 1930s by the pseudoscience of Lysenkoism wrecking their ability to pursue effective research into things like plant genetics and pesticides, due to Trofim Lysenko himself gaining favour with Stalin and using this influence to push his quackery. Come to think of it, is that Lysenko on the left in the picture with Kruschchev at 11:10? He made a lot of false claims about being able to grow food without fertiliser, and he wasn't properly discredited until 1962, so that failed wheat-growing scheme sounds like it could've been one of his many terrible ideas.
"private plots" accounted for 2% of arable land and 38% produce.
@@brucenorman8904 That kind of figure doesn't surprise me.
I heard that in Vietnam after the communist took over farming went down as well but then the people were given a piece of land for themselves and they produced more from that small piece of land than the large collective land. On the other hand in the Philippines were the US had power for a long time they let a few wealthy people own all the land and that didn’t work well either. The best seem to be to give the land to the people and they will work hard. They won’t work as hard for the state nor a wealthy landlord.
American farmers were happy to sell wheat to the USSR. This helped to keep the price of wheat higher.
I find it incredible the soviet agriculture scientists and engineers completely failed to see soil degradation as a massive issue!!
I bet the ones that saw that knew better than go against the will of the Communist party
I was going to say that it was the huge subsidies on bread, that made it impractical to make your own bread at home, because it would cost more, not less. Fresh bread was also available every day, and rationed, so that the first person in line couldn't buy it all up, leaving none for anyone else.
Even in Ultra free enterprise Capitalistic Dollar Store American - Dollar Stores will put a limit on items because they know that hoarding is counter profitable and I think even because businesses have a community interests at heart - we sense something wrong about taking too much
Living in a small city in late communist Poland, the availability of yeast and flour was not an issue (we did bake cakes and various dishes after all). Bread wasn't expensive although price wise it was possible to save some money by baking yourself... however the work required made it not worth it. People had work, people had house chores, school, and you could just go out in the morning and buy a steaming hot bread for breakfast within 5min of walking distance from home. Hence bread would be baked at homes mainly by people who simply liked to do so and were used to doing so, particularly country side where the distances to shops were farther. In cities such bread would be considered more as a treat, not to take anything from the bread we've got from bakeries.
@@ArkadiBolschek If it was a village that had "center" with a few houses around, a shop, maybe even marketplace, then you would buy bread there no problem. However many people did live on small farms a bit further away from such village centers or even without them, so it really depended if they could communicate to shops (by foot, bike, horse or bus) and what their bread needs were. My Grandma lived alone on such farm for several years, but still the shops were 1h away by foot, and there was a road with a bus nearby as well. So she didn't need to bake bread, despite baking cakes and such. Communists actually took care so that there is a bus communication everywhere (they were obsessed with them - in big cities they initially even tried to remove tram lines so there would be only buses). Once communism fell though, such rural bus lines went bankrupt fast.
I do a lot of home brewing, and yeast for making vodka is normally a different strain to that used to make bread, as it is better to have strains that are more tolerant of a high alcohol environment so they can make the most of the wash. wine and some beers use wild yeast, as does sourdough bread. but I guess in soviet union with all shortages they may well have used baking yeast for vodka.
for high-end booze, yes, special yeast is preferred. but, we're talking about the former soviet union... in a place like that you will use whatever you can get your hands on.
I don't know about in the Soviet union but with current grocery store bread yeast you can go up to 12%. But let's say with wild yeast you'd get a mash or "wine" of 3-5 % besides the fact it would probably taste gross running it through a still solves a lot of problems and probably is the same amount of effort compared to botteling gallons of gross 3% potato beer and a no brainer if you want to sell it
For most alcoholic drinks bread yeast works fine; if someone was adamant about brewing on a year round scale they would just have an active culture growing of their favorite yeast to use (and sell for profit if someone wanted to brew) year round. Basically what everyone did before store bought yeast.
When the proper kind is unavailable, or hard to get, you use whatever you can find on the store shelves.
In my visits to Russia and Ukraine, I have always been impressed by the quality of the cheap bread available at every corner store. Much better than the commercial breads I grew up eating in the US. Alas, the same styles of bread sold at Russian stores in the US aren't as good - probably just not as fresh.
Technically, you only need flour and water to make bread. A sourdough starter (which is how bread was made for thousands of years before cultured yeast was available) uses only the yeast which is naturally present in the flour and in the environment where it is made. To this day, Russian makers of mildly fermented drinks like kvass and cider will add freshly-picked berries to the jars in order to introduce wild yeast.
Great video!
The yeast actually comes from the air, not the flour. You just make the dough and let it sit out uncovered. If you don't leave it out it won't rise because it won't get yeast
@@itsROMPERS... It can come from both. Which is why a new starter made with unbleached whole grain develops faster than one with bleached, processed flour. Because the yeast which thrives in the wheat fields is still present in the flour.
Besides, if there's yeast in the environment (and there is), why *wouldn't* it also be in the flour, too? :)
@@CHChris I'm just saying that if you make dough and expect it to rise without exposing it to the yeast in the air, you're probably not going to have a very good result. That's what I gather from the videos I've watched about it. I don't have experience with this though, I've never made bread, I can't eat it.
Clearly yeast is everywhere though
@@itsROMPERS... Yep, you're absolutely right. And I definitely suggest giving it a try - there are some great tutorial videos out there, you can get a sourdough starter going in a week or so, and actually baking the bread isn't hard either. It's totally worth the effort!
@@CHChris I believe it, I love good sour dough, which is why I was watching videos about it.
Then I found out I have type 2 diabetes, so anything made with white flour is something I shouldn't eat.
I could have a little, it wouldn't kill me, but I really shouldn't, so it's not worth going to the effort of making.
Best ex Soviet life review Brah on UA-cam!
Happy New Year Sergei 🎊
Happy new year!
Honestly, the cost, in terms of ingredients and time, is why I buy bread in America. Yes, Flour and yeast are cheap, but making bread requires hours of labor, and where I live, I always run the risk of a poor rise. Maybe if I were a better baker, I could produce consistent good bread, but it just seems so much easier to buy a loaf and know it's going to be right.
Many thrift stores have bread machines! I got a brand new one for $10 this summer. Pop the ingredients in, hit the timer so it’s ready when you are, go about your day. No kneading or anything, and it makes a great gift. I’ve gone through dozens of pounds of flour 😊
In college I bought a bread maker for 10 dollars, buy the flour and such in bulk, a 10 pound bag cost me around 6 dollars. I think I had the price at around 10-15 cents per loaf of bread
Mind you all I had to do is put a scoop of flour, water, yeast, and sugar + salt and boom, the machine instantly started to make me bread
You must live somewhere very humid if a poor rise is the issue with your baking. That can be tricky, but I think you can make up for it by adding an extra pinch of salt or two in many cases.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe I'll try it, thanks!
Thanks, was very interesting. Loved the black and white clips about bread production at the end
During the first year of covid (spring of 2020 to spring of 2021) i was doing almost all of the grocery shopping for about 5-6 households in my immediate family (myself and my mother, both of my brother’s family, my mother’s sister, my adult step niece, and both sets of my step niece’s grand parents…. Bread was rationed per visit which meant every time i went in i always bought as many loaves as i was allowed, but i also quickly bought up as much yeast, baking soda, and baking powder as i could as well as flours and salt and sugars….
From that point of view soviet russia had a covid type lock down when it came to bread …. It baked nearly all of the basic bread and it controlled with an iron fist all of the staples one needs to make bread…. Which made bread making a expensive affair and limited only to breads made as special treats ….. its similar to how in the us its practically impossible to make ones own cheese because of how strictly regulated the sale of unpasteurized milk is.
In a similar way that the us government obstructs the making of cheese it also obstructs the average citizens private access to milk, eggs, and meat. Nearly all of the animals that are practical for the development of these products are nearly impossible to be raised as pets and you will often see clandestine attempts raided and shut down. About the only ones that are remotely effective are stealth duck ponds, hidden “wild” rabbit warrens and hidden artificial squirrels nests with standard feeders occasional switched with identical looking bait traps
That is utter nonsense. Dairy farming? U cant ever leave the farm, 2-3 milkings a day, 365 day a year. Dairy cows are lots of work and very costly to take proper care of. Dairy cows as pets? Pigs or goats as pets? You must be a child of the city. Land, feed, shelter, equipment, veterinary care. Yes there are laws regulating the amount of land needed for different types of animals to graze. Even chickens need proper care and space to live.
The last two sentences are absolutely nuts. How many people can you feed with a stealth duck pond? Jezzus.
But cheese can be made from pasteurized milk ... rennet & citric acid are freely available.
@@virginiaoflaherty2983 Yes, no kidding. Keeping animals on the farm is constant work, year round, with no vacations. Heatwave, rain, sleet, snow ... doesn’t matter, you are taking care of those animals, 365 days a year.
@@virginiaoflaherty2983I agree with nearly everything you said.
Except that there are probably some 1,000,000 Gosts kept as "pets" or on "boutique farms" and micro diaries, or just to eat the grass, weeds, briars, etc.
My cousin and her husband had a half dozen goats, partially for the milk. In their area had to be at least 100 other goats 🐐
I used to work for UPS, doing "special deliveries" in the Air Division. I was surprised by how many "boutique farms" are within 20 to 50 miles of Seattle.
At the various fairs, I often browse the 4H displays and small vendors with local cheeses, other dairy products, eggs, even meats.
I live in a suburb of Seattle and there are several farms and diaries within 3 to 5 miles of my home. I get cider, ice cream, cheese, honey, etc. Goat products are widely available.
Seattle, similar to Portland, San Francisco, and other parts of California may be atypical markets. But I associate with some people who "hobby farm" or are "locovores" and they are more aware of what is going on nationally, and in Canada.
You can make a dough and allow it to catch wild yeast. Might take a few tries but this is how you make sourdough. Then you can save a piece of that dough and use it to inoculate further dough.
I’ve tried dosing a runny version of dough with yeast and then continuing on, using the original batch as a kind of starter….
I’ve had bad luck, by and large, with bread of all kinds.
At least one brewer in Belgium uses the open window method for the yeast in its beer.
It was a darker beer brewed in an old monastery. About all I remember.
Sandor Elix Katz wrote a book called Wild Fermentation. Interesting to think of bread as a wild ferment.
Fascinating as always!
You only need flour and water to make bread. The yeast comes from the air so you just need to wait for that.
Yes only Soviets think bread is cheaper than flour lol.
@@donwald3436thats hoow subsidizing works.
Make tank treads
@@donwald3436 he just used a whole video explaining that they didn't just think it was cheaper but that it actually WAS cheaper , for reasons given in the video
@@donwald3436 It literally was tho, that's like the point of this video dude
Really informative!
A bit off topic comment but spring 2020 brought back strong flashbacks to Soviet times when we had empty shelves, food shortages and long lines outside supermarkets and I Iive in Massachusetts. I could not believe that 30 years after the collapse of Soviet Union I was standing outside a store in a bread line that circled all AROUND a huge building.
I remember a massive snow event that prevented delivery of food to stores in the 1990's. People were crying for bread while the aisle with all kinds of flour and yeast and salt was full. Be self reliant. Learn a life saving skill. Muffins, biscuits, fry bread, pancakes, hoe cakes, tortillas, tacos etc are all quick and easy substitutes for bread.
Great video. I loved the topic and your story on this subject.
That was fascinating, thank you.
Neat content, good analysis: i like the big picture overview.well done.
Great video!
Thank you for this video, I really enjoyed it.
This was very informative, I enjoyed watching your video.
Very interesting and high-quality research. Thanks.
Even in the West, making your own bread was more expensive. It's a commodity, you cant compete with huge manufacturers.
Interesting, thank you for talking about this.
My pleasure!
Very good video. Thank you Sir.
In Denmark you can get 1 kilogram of cheap rye bread for $1.69 at full price, while 1 kilogram of rye flour costs $1.61. So in the end, almost no savings if you want to add other ingredients, like yeast if you aren’t making a sourdough bread with wild yeast.
You can get wheat flour for $0.84/kg, so that is a much more affordable option, but again, mass produced bread isn’t that expensive, and the quality is quite good here, and there are so many options to choose from. An average small local grocery store will have like 20+ different types of bread that are delivered completely fresh or almost fresh every day.
You also have to factor in the cost of labor and electricity when making your own bread, to see if it’s actually worth it. If you like making bread, then that’s fine, but I don’t enjoy baking bread, so it’s not worth it to me.
Great video
Very good explanations and examples. Thank you.
Wow, fascinating!
Very interesting. It's nice to hear a 1st hand account, and reasons why there were bread lines, and practical examples of why/how collective farms failed.
Soviet bread was tasty. Plus besides normal brick bread we had tandyr bread, which was a lot more expensive but just as good, and more chewy
7:30 Diary is heavily subsidized by the American government.
I remember we had yeast in those wet bricks and I don't remember shortages until the late 80s. We baked sweet white breads with raisins for holidays.
Happy Christmas Sergei!😆
I really enjoyed this video.
Saw this the other day:
"You speak English because it's the only language you know.
I speak English because it's the only language you know."
That's awesome! The most spoken language in the world? English with the accent
On the price of the flour, keep in mind bread contains lots of water as well, something like 30-40%. A half kilo of bread will require less flour. You also end up with a lot higher quality bread. Since you would eat a lot of it, having a sourdough would also eliminate the need to add yiest. It honestly sounds like a culture thibg honestly.
10:35 Traditionally, starving a large, dangerous animal is a surefire way to get it to attack you. I am sure Sergei's idea was tossed around Washington as some form of playing 'hardball' with the Soviet Union, but the many benefits of selling grain (and the increased security of having them dependent on the West for basic foodstuffs) won out.
Fun fact: it was "hard-liner" Reagan who cancelled American grain embargo imposed by "softy" Carter
Indeed, in the movie 'Red Dawn' the Soviet assault was preceded by a food crisis caused by a harvest failure@@UshankaShow
@@UshankaShow As I also understand it when I spoke to a lady who lived through the Soviet Collapse of the 1990s (while in college and taking a class in Russian history) it was George Bush Sr. who imported a lot of chicken (?) into the former USSR states that were dealing with food insecurity issues. She had mentioned "Bush's Chickens" in the talk as if it was some sort of normal thing, but it was something I'd never heard of as an American.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe "Bush's Legs" we called American chicken because the legs looked so huge.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_legs
5:30 sounds like an intentional way to price people out of being self-sufficient.
In my opinion that's 100% why.. I'm sure some people had a plug for flour in rural wheat farming areas but in the cities it was a struggle and to be honest cooking bread can be difficult to make right. I can make some mean homemade biscuits! the bread never was the same as what I got commercially. I was already conditioned to like pre-made.
That same thing happened in North Carolina when Zoe was subsidized, my uncle, tub, farmed pigs, and tobacco for generations nobody could pass up the offer of subsidized soybean crops, it burned the soil up so badly nothing could really be grown for some time, this is soil that used to be the sea bed as the beach used to be well beyond where it was before the last Ice Age. When it rains little black, sharks teeth would appear everywhere instead of arrowheads they were sharks teeth what that tells me is that there is a lot of crustacean matter, broken down, chitin, and other nutrients in the soil, much of which, including sulfites end up, washed into the water table that is why the water stains yellow smells like shit, and the only thing that water is good for is boiling hot dogs. It makes really good hotdogs.
Went to Bucharest, Romania 2002 and it was like walking back to the 19th century seeing farmers plowing fields with ox's and mules. Did not see one modern piece of farming equipment from airport to Bucharest. Good vid. I'm old enough to remember the good ole days of the "Duck and Cover" school exercises.
Using animals for farming was a dirrect consequence of the agricultural collapse in Romania after the collapse of the communist regime. We went from a mechanised agriculture done over huge areas to plowing by horse. Why did this happen? When the communist regime collapsed people wanted their agricultural land back, so the huge kolhoz type farms were destroyed, equipment stolen or sold for scrap and the people - mostly older- got their land back. The land was split in tiny patches worked by hand. A complete disaster until the farmers started selling/renting their land. Now the situation is a lot better. The land is worked by machines and farms are usualy at least 30-40 ha large.
That desert bread looks good looks amazing and its crazy this week i tried my hand at making bread not going to say how it turned out but thats awesome you did a video on bread
The food he probaly mentioned that his mother made was a potica. Its a pretty common food when it comes to religion thing. The sugar comes from raisins inside and you generaly add something else in mix.
Oh also...finding kvas is easy. In old times people simply took the apples that smeled like alcohol (wich is byproduct) and put flower close to it. The microorganizems moved to the flour and then to keep them up for longer they were moved from one product to another to feed on to keep alive (since frezzing them was not a option).
Nice videos, and also your voice help me to sleep.
Thank you.
IMHO main reason for buying bread was not price, but freshness. Bread was baked and delivered to stores twice a day - in the morning 10am and in the evening around 4pm. So bread was always fresh and tasty. Home bread is better, but you can't bake it every day.
two things you can *ALWAYS* get in belarus is a loaf of bread and a bottle of vodka.. there may not be much of anything else on the shelves in the store, but there will always be bread and vodka
In Ukraine Odessa in the 70"s we had 1 bakery with in 2 min walk and 3 bakeries within 5 min . walk. There were about 15 varities of bread loafs and bagels and usually you knew which time which variety would be baked , so you could get it warm, The prices were from 18 cents to 26 cents a loaf and black bread for poor people was from 12 cents. Wages for a teacher was around $4.30 per day, Engineer $7.00 per day, Process worker $9.00 per day.
That's similar to what I remember from my childhood. Do you remember if they had any cookies? As I remember they did not. Interesting is why?
A Bakery or a bread store? Bulochnaya? We had those in Kyiv as well. But not in small villages.
@@andriyka17 I only saw cookies in the west, we had pirozhenae like a slice of cake or torte in about 4 or 5 varieties in general stores and about 20 varieties in a proper Cake shop (not bakery). You got the 2 cent discount on Brezhenevsk birthday.
Your English is definitely better than my Russian! Thanks for the video. I do know that production of everything was “strictly controlled” in the old USSR. Your explanation seems to verify that.
Thanks! That's "Centrally Planned" economy in it's best
Agriculture Subsidies are in the U.S. also we have over150 different programs to help Farmers!
In the 80's, we used to make our own bread all the time.
I like the smell of fresh bread and eating it while it's still hot.
I don't make bread the old way anymore. Now I have 2 bread machines.
Thanks for this wonderful opportunity to learn about part of the world and the times that I would have had no chance of learning .. You told a good story and made a lot of sense .. But most of all, I would probably have to go on my entire life without a chance to look into the lives and times of the Soviet Union .. They talk about the new space telescope, giving us a chance of learning things we never would have learned .. You gave me a similar shining light ..
.... In Soviet Russia .... grain.... grows...
*YOU*
Happy Boxing Day, fellah. I really enjoy your stories of growing up in the USSR. I find these fascinating. Please keep them coming.
Yeast can be made from potatoes quite easily. But the flower can be a problem. Bread flower is actually different from cake flower and can consist of different mixed grains and normally have a coarser gritt . You can use corn flower as well but that is an acquired taste. Bread has been made for thousands of years with different ingredients and in very primitive ways. . But I think you are spot on, the subsidised bread was cheaper than the ingredients to prevent a free market.
We hosted refugees from Bosnia, formerly Yugoslavia, and they made their own bread, it was great.
Just a nit, but all of the price difference in the USSR between bread and butter may not be due to subsidies. Rather, the US is currently the second largest dairy producer in the world. We produce roughly three times what Russia currently does. So some of the price difference may be due to that, rather than Russian subsidies on bread. (In fact I believe that the US is subsidizing dairy products, so some of the price difference may be due to that. Anytime you have subsidies, you don't get the free market price, and it becomes difficult to understand what the real price would be.)
Before watching this I’d say it was hard to get hold of strong bread flour, the Yeats and a home warm enough to prove the dough and enough fuel to bake it. From what my family and 🇺🇦grandad told me
It crosses my mind that one reason for the USSR providing heavily-subsidized and centrally-delivered bread is that it might have been a control measure. If you control a basic food staple, it's easier to put a stop to rebellions by withholding it. If people use cheap store bread rather than making their own at home, they are less independent, and less likely to develop capitalistic tendencies by selling it to their neighbors, etc. I don't have any proof/examples this was actually policy, but it fits with how they do business in other areas.
That's a fairly pessimistic idea, they subsidized it so that no matter what you could afford to eat bread. If there wanted to put down rebellions they had millions of tanks and cops for that anyway 😅
america subsidise the shit out of corn syrup...
but even the most anti-american person wouldnt say they are doing it as a control measure.
America does it for the money and economy.
USSR did it cuz a well fed worker is more useful than a starving one. Basically for the economy too, making sure your workforce can afford basic food is good for the economy.
plus yea they had tanks for rebellions
@@jameshodgson3656 his comment makes sense if looked at from the other angle: it's a justification as to why you can't have public goods, if something is free, that's unfair to someone who wants to make a profit from it
@@eviliraqi Then please explain why countries that use a free market system don't have issues with production. Why is Russia still unable to provide basic goods. They import a lot.
Really funny where you get all the pictures fram :D
At 6:26 a civilian modern version of former Swedish military bicycle.with bread on it....
You are correct, bread was heavily subsidized. It goes back to the 1917 revolution and the paranoia that no bread could lead to riots. So the last price controls to go…were bread
You do not need to buy yeast, it is made from wetted flour stored at room temperature for a couple of days. That makes sourdough yeast.
Finished bread has a lot of moisture, so you can't compare it square on to flour, but the answer is what I expected.
После распада (вырос в Туркменистане) помню как стояли в очередях за ужасным хлебом. Мне было года 4 наверное. Ещё помню как грузовик с молоком (такая совкавая цистерна) приезжал во двор и сигналил и все с баклажками выбегали. Привет из Манчестера!
So TLDR: the people who had the means to do that made moonshine vodka instead
You should add 500g plain flour, half a teaspoon of salt, a 7G sachet of dried yeast and a little oil or butter and mix. Then add 300ml of warm water and knead to make a good dough. Put in a large bowl and keep it warm for 2 hours while it rises. Then knead the dough again and let it rise for another hour. Bake in a hot oven for 35-40 minutes. The result depends on how you knead the dough. If you can't get dried yeast add bicarbonate of soda and make what the Irish call Soda Bread.
Best bread I had was in Vladimir, Russia. So many flavors and it was all delicious. I brought a loaf home and Dad ate it nonstop. I told him it was 2 days old and not worth it. He said, “It’s still better than what we have here.”
thank you for your insights into the old soviet world
I had to share this with my daughter who bakes professionally. You gotta talk about something while the dough rises. (Just kidding. Put down that wooden spoon.) Being a good baker means cleaning something. There is no idle time.
In Polish we say bread very similar Sergei.
Dobre
The slavic languages are very stable. Russian and Polish languages of the east and west slaves split up around the 5th century. Still it is possible for a Pole and a Russian to understand each other well, if they are speaking slowly and listen carefully.
No english speaking person from today could understand an english speaking person from that time. One couldn't even understand Chaucers original texts from the 14th century without taking special courses in college or university. 😅
2:40 Look at how happy that lady is. Track suit, bread, vodka...Is anything more necessary in life?
Interesting.