Traditional Bride's Bread a Piece of Art

Before we had wedding cakes, people celebrated with wedding bread. I mentioned this in my post about the Evolution of the Wedding Cake Tradition and how the bread was thrown at the bride for good luck during the ceremony to encourage fertility! 

Later as this custom evolved, the groom broke the loaf over the bride’s head and showered her with crumbs for good luck. While many cultures transitioned from bread to sweet confections, wedding bread is still a beautiful tradition in places like Bulgaria, Russia, Ukrainia, Poland and Romania. When I say “beautiful,” I’m not just talking in a theoretical sense. This bread known as Russian karavay, Ukranian korovai, karavai, korowaj or kravai holds deep symbolic meaning, and unlike wedding cakes of today, can’t be bought (or at least not for those holding to tradition). 

Symbolic Meaning of Korovai Wedding Bread

For the sake of this post, I’ll choose the korovai spelling for this traditional bride’s bread. This ritual bread is the main symbol of the marriage ceremony no matter the order of events or the format of the wedding (church or civil). Its shape and decorations all hold symbolic meanings.

• Round shape represents the sun. In the ancient Slavic culture, the god of the son was the main deity and so the round loaf was one way to curry the sun god’s favor for a new family.
• Decorations adorning the loaf: Korovai loaves are decorated with dough decorations like leaves and flowers and traditionally included two rings or a pair of swans which represents loyalty in love. While it baked, wheat stalks and tiny viburnum twigs were added. The wheat symbolized prosperity and the viburnum represented love and children. And since the bread was thought to bring happiness, many times bigger was thought to be better because the larger the loaf the more happiness would be bestowed on the newlyweds.

Today, decorations include braided strips of dough, spiral shapes, and cutters are used to create flowers and heart shapes, and little bits of rolled dough form berries, along with other creative touches.

Eating Korovai

Traditionally the bride and groom were the first have a bite of the korovai, and then it was shared with all the guests. This distribution of bread to others represented sharing their happiness. As for the decorations, they were normally doled out to unmarried girls as a way to help fulfill their wish for family happiness in their own lives.

Who Makes the Bride’s Bread?

Traditionally, making korovai was a process that combined a number of ceremonies that could take days to complete. Singing songs and prayers were part of this ritual, and the use of specific tools like a traditional ceremonial millstone to grind the grain were all essentials. But besides the ceremonial rites and tools the thing that hasn’t changed is who makes the bride’s bread. The answer is: only married women…and not just married women, but married women who have children and strong family bonds. Only these women were trusted to make the dough because through the process it was thought that they were sharing their family happiness with the newlyweds..

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Photo credits: pixabay, mazovia.pl, garnek