Czech Bread Soup might not look like much but it’s a dish that played an important role in the survival of many.
Table of Contents
Worst Food?
Soggy bread, some water, perhaps a little garlic or some herbs and that’s it. Maybe that is why the Taste Atlas made the bread soup nr. 4 on their list of 100 Worst Rated Foods in the World. Should we feel offended? No way! First, let’s admit the obvious. The soup isn’t much to look at. As for the taste, it can be absolutely bland or very good according to the ingredients. You add some garlic and basically get the Czech Garlic Soup. You add caraway and get Caraway Soup. The bread acts like roux in soups and sauces and if you boil it enough, it will be just that.
And it’s not just what you can do with the taste, the soup played an important historical role in several areas of our country. Let’s take this opportunity to see why it isn’t some pigswill but a dish that saved many people from starvation.
History of Czech Bread Soup
The bread soup comes from the toughest areas of our country, the mountains. People who settled here were extremely poor and living in conditions that didn’t give them many prospects for a better life. Long freezing winters when the only green things you could see grow were the pine trees and the moss covering the stones, and short summers that allowed few plants to grow and give fruit.
As Jiří Marhold explains in his cookbook Krkonošská kuchařka (Cookbook from Krkonoše), we are talking about the times when children crying from hunger were given turnips to suck ok, when people made bread from hay because they didn’t have enough flour and when soups were made from roux and water and nothing more. Such times lasted at least until mid 19th century.
It is hard to imagine from our position of abundance of everything, that nothing went to waste, so that even potato peels were used to make broth or that soup was often the only meal people had in a day.
As I already mentioned, roux soup was quite common. If there was old bread, it was soaked in water and added to the soup. Anything people had at home, they added to the soup – a piece of onion, a potato, some garlic, fresh herbs in summer and rarely also carrots or other vegetables.
Bread, in general, was very important in these areas, it was a side dish to every meal and often times, the only meal. Even when it became too hard to eat, it could be dried and stored for later use in other dishes. This is why areas like Krkonoše gave us so many interesting bread recipes like the Potato Bread.
In conclusion, Bread Soup wasn’t invented to be fancy, look beautiful and be photographed in magazines. It’s a dish born from necessity, made with what was often the only ingredients people had.
How to Make Czech Bread Soup
Plain Soup
Ingredients
- half a litter of water
- 3 slices of old bread
- 1 tbsp of lard
- salt to taste
How to make it
Cut the bread in smaller pieces. Boil some water and add bread.
Keep adding water little by little and cook until the bread is boiled to mush. Add a spoonful of lard and salt to taste.
Better Soup
Ingredients
- half a litter of vegetable or meat broth
- 3 slices of old bread
- 1 tbsp of lard
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 egg
- fresh herbs: lovage, parsley
How to make it
Boil a little broth and add pieces of bread. Keep adding broth little by little until the bread turns to mush. Add lard, crushed garlic, salt and pepper to taste and chopped herbs. You can whisk in one egg if you don’t mind that in a soup.
