Baking Bread Among Different Territorial Groups of Kyrgyz People
Bread and Bread Products.
Bread baking was most widespread in the southern regions and also in Karategin. It is based on common Central Asian traditions, primarily carried by Uzbeks - Sarts and Tajiks.
Baked bread constituted a small part of everyday food. Flour products in various forms were combined with meat and dairy products; often they played an independent role in the diet. Baking dough in ash, frying in a dry cauldron or skillet, and boiling in fat or broth were widely practiced. These methods varied in details among different territorial groups of Kyrgyz.
Bread products were made from two types of dough: unleavened and sour. The following varieties of bread existed - tokoch or nan kazan kemech, a flatbread made from sour dough baked in a cauldron (also called katyrma, kalama), kemech - bread baked in a skillet over ash, kattama - a rich, flaky thin flatbread fried in beef fat; nabat - a layered flatbread made from unleavened dough baked in a dry cauldron (each layer was greased with melted butter); boorsok - fried pieces of sour dough, rolled out and cut into various shapes (usually cut into squares and diamonds, but also found in elongated and thin forms); mai tokoch - large round flatbreads fried in fat with two parallel cuts in the center and its variety - chelpak, which differs from mai tokoch by having a small round hole in the center, etc. All these types of bread products were found everywhere. Another product made from sour dough, prepared in the same way as mai tokoch, but having a wider shape and rolled thinner - chozmo. It was previously prepared for the New Year for pious purposes - kudaiy, i.e., it had a ritual character (Kochkunov, 2003. p. 12). The most widespread were kemech nan or kemkerme made from sour dough, baked in a skillet over ash.
In the southern regions and partly in the Talas and Chui valleys, baking bread in a tandyr and in a Russian oven began to spread. In other areas, baking bread in ash remained stable. Bread baked in tandyrs was called tandyr nan or more often by the name of the grain from which the bread was made: arpa nan - barley bread, taryk (taruu) nan - millet bread, zagra (zygir) nan - bread made from djugara, konok nan - bread made from megara (Italian millet), etc. However, as our field materials testify, taryk nan, konok nan were also baked in hot ash.
Some spread in the diet of Kyrgyz included unleavened pancakes or fritters - kuymak. For this, millet flour was usually used.
Various types of bread products were consumed daily, while some, for example, boorsok, mai tokoch, were prepared for holidays, for memorials for the deceased, i.e., they had a ritual character.
From cereal crops (flour, various grains), drinks were also prepared: maksym - a sour drink made from crushed barley without malt (non-alcoholic), achykyl zharmа - a drink made from crushed roasted wheat or barley grains. Depending on additional ingredients, zharmа had varieties such as suzmё zharmа, sut zharmа, sorpo zharmа, etc. The listed drinks were sometimes seasoned with sour milk or sour cream.
In the second half of the 19th century, according to other historical sources even earlier, Kyrgyz were familiar with alcoholic beverages {Valikhanov, 1985. p. 343,344; Radlov, 1989. p. 349). There were two types of alcoholic beverages: bozo, (made from boiled, fermented millet grains), from which vodka was distilled, and milk vodka - arak, chagyrmak was distilled from kumys using a special apparatus - kapka chorgo. There were also other methods of obtaining alcoholic beverages from kumys and bozo without distilling them. For example, to obtain a strong alcoholic drink from kumys, a cleaned root of the plant kuchala - chili bush was placed at the bottom of the skin - saba. To strengthen kumys, the root of the plant ak kodol - round-leaved aconite was also used. The drink bozo was accessible to all.
Alcoholic drinks made from bread were mainly the privilege of the wealthy strata of the population.
All groups of Kyrgyz consumed tea (Valikhanov, 1985. p. 257; Kushelevsky, 1881. p. 255). It was most widespread in the southern and western regions of the country. They mainly consumed brick tea, and in its absence, they used wild substitutes. Tea was brewed in three types: tea with milk, without milk, and green tea. A special mention is kuurma chai - analogous to Kalmyk tea. To prepare it, flour or talqan (tolokno) was first fried in oil, then water or milk was added and boiled. Salt, oil, and finely chopped dried meat or lamb tail were added to the finished mixture for nutritional properties. Kuurma chai was most popular in the northern regions of Kyrgyzstan.
Overall, in the traditional diet of Kyrgyz, products from animal husbandry played a dominant role. Meat dishes and various dairy drinks across the entire territory inhabited by Kyrgyz were generally uniform, which allows us to conclude that this layer of food culture has been consistently preserved since ancient times. The spread of flour dishes and products was uneven and depended on the level of agricultural development in various regions and the intensity of interethnic contacts with the carriers of settled agricultural traditions. However, millet and proso were consumed everywhere, and the main dishes made from them differed in variety. The existing opinion in ethnographic literature that these grains were characteristic of the semi-nomadic population of Central Asia since ancient times is well confirmed by Kyrgyz materials.
Food played an important role as a regulator in the system of traditional social relations. Essentially, it helped resolve conflict situations, and in other cases, it acted as a catalyst for their emergence or escalation, especially in power relations (Kochkunov, 2012. pp. 105-114). In public meals, any type of food had a special status, unlike family meals, although within the family, the order of seniority was strictly observed.
Flour Products
