Someone just sent me this video, which I just had to share!  It’s not only about bread baking, but this woman reminds me so much of my own grandma in Latvia and so many other dear Latvian grandmas I’ve met in my lifetime.

The setting is ’tipiski latvisks’,  typical of an old farmhouse in Latvia, a life style, unfortunately, which is dying out.  And I so love that old wall oven; which reminds me, that I’ve just got to make the time to try and make my own rupjmaize!!

http://vimeo.com/10324219

Irena

That was wonderful, Irena!  And then I got sucked in and watched the one about lamprey fishing (I’ve done that exactly one time, and it was done quite differently!), and then the one about musical instruments… I hope there are more videos of the kind there.  I will look for them, but had to return momentarily to thank you for posting!

My wife taught bread making at the community college several years ago. After tasting many versions of Latvian Rye she she came up with her version. It all started with putting fire brick in the oven and using the heat from it to bake the bread. The bread with bricks tasted different than the ones without the bricks.

This video was as real as it gets for connecting me to many fond emotions and memories of my mother when she was still among us. My mom also routinely fussed over her dog and cats as she prepared food. Even many of her other mannerisms and facial expressions were similar to those of the rugged but loving subject of this mini-video-documentary. The wonderful vecmāmuliņa in the video is 85 years young, living life strong, and obviously eating tastier bread than I am eating these days. Three cheers for her!!

And likewise three cheers for you, Irēna, for sharing this video gem and triggering a trip down memory lane for me and probably many, many others here on LOL. What a terrific find.

Pateicos,

Alberts

I’m always glad when I can share something which will make people happy, put a smile not their faces, Anita, Albert et al ;-)!  And Anita, I’m glad you mentioned the other videos—the lamprey fishing, folk instruments.  If you look at the site there are several videos about Latvia;  Another I particularly like is the one about making ‘puzuri’!

Irena

Thank you Courlander!

It does take time to get these recipes just right and even then, sometimes the yeast doesn’t rise the way it should or something else goes wrong.  It took my mother some time and experimentation before she was able to make very tasty loaves of bread. Of course, unfortunately, we don’t have (or at least, I don’t) the kind of wall oven that this vecmamulina has.  I once visited some people who had an old farmhouse in Bauska, not too far from the Lithuanian border; they had a huge oven built into their home, from floor to ceiling; that was something to behold!

Irena

Maybe bread bakers here could connect with a local pizzaria that has a brick oven?  Tuesday nights are traditionally slow in all retail businesses.

I too was very touched by the video and kept watching it several times over.  My childhood memories are so scant and it could be more from what my folks told me than what I actually remember, but in our farmhouse we had a wood burning stove and something called “muris” that gave off heat, even after the fire in the stove had gone out.  Our cats usually claimed a spot on it.  Back in the 50’s I watched an Ingrid Bergman movie “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” which took place in China.  The Inn had what I would call a “muris” and travelers who stopped for the night would sleep on it,like out cats. I’m not even sure what its real purpose was, if it wasn’t for heat and sleeping. I don’t think you could bake bread on it.
My dad did bake his own sourdough rye bread after my mom passed away in Colorado Springs. He had his
sourdough starter and a wooden paddle he used to mix the dough.  It took him a couple of days and the result was fabulous.  No bread in any US bakery could come close. And I was too dumb to learn how he did
it!
After seeing this video I am with Irena. I have to learn how to make Latvian bread.