Where There’s Zwieback, There’s Hope

April 9, 2020

As many people took to baking and cooking when told to stay home to flatten the COVID-19 curve, I too decided to make some comfort food—though no one in my household would say I am a baker. My choice of recipe from The Mennonite Treasury of Recipes was for a simple, two-layered, white flour yeast bun called Zwieback (there are many spellings, this is my choice). It is a foodstuff familiar to Mennonites with ancestral history in the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. While pretty much all of the foods I grew up calling ‘Mennonite’ were actually appropriated from the cultures within which Mennonites lived—borscht soup, cabbage rolls, perogies—zwieback seems to be unique. Its origins are not certain, but it may have entered Mennonite homes 500 years ago in the Netherlands or Prussia.

Zwieback was baked for Sunday meals, weddings, funerals, and other special occasions. Most importantly, it was the quintessential food for journeys. Mennonites have a history of migration that involved long journeys over borders, between continents, and across oceans. Sometimes those journeys had years of advance planning, while at other times they were hurried flights in the midst of war and persecution. As preparation for these migrations, women would bake dozens and dozens of zwieback. Then the buns were baked again, roasted to a hard rusk, in order to preserve them. Hence the name, which can mean both ‘two-buns’ and ‘twice-baked.’ When roasted properly, thoroughly dried out, and cooled, they lasted for months without turning rancid. Zwieback has been compared to the ‘hard-tack’ of sailors, something that would not perish during months at sea.

This was not the first time I baked zwieback. My first batch, perhaps twenty years ago, I brought along as visual aid to an academic presentation about Mennonite foodways. My family said they looked like cow pies; this was not a compliment, and they were right. I continued my attempts, mainly to bring them to my university class lectures on food and culture. Despite the use of many cookbooks and YouTube videos, I couldn’t make them light and fluffy enough. Indeed, some batches were so hard they did not require twice-baking! One day I asked my mother to come over to watch and instruct me. She normally made butterhorn rolls, but had learned zwieback-baking from her mother, my grandmother, who made a migrant journey from the Soviet Union to southern Ontario in 1924, likely with a sack full of zwieback. Under my mother’s supervision, I learned that I was not kneading the dough nearly long enough. Patience was required, as it is during these days of COVID-19 anxiety, as well as endurance.

Zwieback is one of those foods that conjures up memories and family stories. Written memoirs and oral histories of Mennonite migrants are full of such stories. The memories might be of sadness and fear, as families prepared to leave their homes, forever, in the midst of violent warfare. The stories are also of hope, as zwieback may have been the last foodstuff remaining as Mennonite refugee families journeyed to find new homes. Because zwieback was, historically, such a ‘hallmark’ food for some Mennonites, it also represented familiarity and normalcy. This was especially true when famine and wartime scarcity from the early 1920s through the Second World War compelled Mennonites to eat foods that would never otherwise have been part of their diet. After these tumultuous years, the opportunity to bake and eat zwieback again signaled a return to normal life—a state we are longing for these days.

For me, zwieback represents security and familiarity in times of disruption. For Mennonite migrants, they were about overcoming fear, looking forward to the future, about hope and anticipation. I am very privileged in these days, my cupboards are full, and I think it unlikely that I will be twice-baking zwieback out of fear of food scarcity. As long as I can still bake zwieback, I have hope for the future.

Recipe from The Mennonite Treasury of Recipes (Steinbach, MB: Derksen Printers, 1962) Zwieback, by Mrs. A. Rempel, Chortitz, Manitoba

2 cups milk
1 cup butter room temp.
1 package yeast
½ cup lukewarm water
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
6 cups flour

Dissolve 1 package of yeast in the lukewarm water, and 1 tsp. sugar and let rise. Scald milk and cool. Put milk, butter, yeast and salt in large bowl. Beat in enough flour to make smooth soft dough. Knead well, cover and let rise until double in bulk. Now form buns the size of a large walnut placing a smaller bun on top of a larger one on a greased pan, pressing down firmly with one finger. Let rise till double in bulk. Bake in oven 350º for approx. 15-20 min.

Marlene Epp is a professor of History and Peace & Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College at University of Waterloo, where she teaches Mennonite studies, and food history, among other things.