Sunday, October 3, 2010

Zwiebach: Grandma's Specialty (rough draft)

I love having a grandma. When I was little, my grandma always cooked for my family and I whenever we'd visit her. Either we'd visit as a family or one of us kids visited one at a time. My grandma was an amazing cook. One thing she would always cook was zwiebach. Zwiebach are little rolls that pull apart into two separate pieces, the name even means "two bread". I love these rolls and request them whenever I know we're going to see her. They're good plain or with butter, they're good with jelly and jam, whatever flavor you can think of probably will be good on zwiebach. You can even make little sandwiches with meat and cheese on it. Zwiebach are sweeter and a little denser than regular rolls.
Zwiebach is a type of bread that is originally cooked by Mennonites, which are a type of Christian group that began in the 16th century), and is really popular and centers around the mid west, especially in Kansas. Here, a woman named Ellen tells of how she learned to cook zwiebach and even has a recipe for it. I don't know how easy it is to make these right but my mom always said grandma's are the best. My mom did make good ones also, but grandma's really are better. I suppose it's because she has way more experience and I'm sure she's perfected the art of zwiebach baking.

Zwiebach is something my whole family loves, even the extended members. I might be right in claiming it as a "staple" food in my family. It's been around for as long as I can remember and since most of my family are German, I've always believed zwiebach to be a German thing, but I've found out there are Russian types as well. I've also found a variety of recipes for zwiebach and each one was a little different. Some have eggs, some have a cinnamon roll option which I'd love to try and I'm sure it would be amazing. I don't know what all is in my grandma's recipe, but I would sure like to try some of these others and compare them, though I'm sure my grandma's zwiebach would blow them out of the water (I suppose that's sort of a biased opinion).
I assume not everybody has heard of zwiebach before. It was surprisingly hard to find information them or pictures of them on the Internet. If you're somebody who likes rolls, you should definitely check these out, they smell great when they're cooking and they taste delicious (best rolls out there in my opinion). If you pick a recipe and the rolls turn out terrible, don't blame me or give up, just pick a different one and try again. I believe the recipe I have linked would be a good one to start with, or if you have a Mennonite grandmother or know any Mennonites, then you'd probably be better off having them cook some for you as they probably have plenty experience.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Aaron, well now I know what I am going to experiment with making for this thanksgivings family get together. Thank you.

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