Russian culture is known for its hospitality and rich cuisine. When welcoming guests, we always make sure to have yummy treats on the table: whether it’s a full three course dinner or a pot of tea and a pile of hot freshly-made pancakes with jam or honey. We will talk more about food in the following lessons, and today you will learn about the types of bread and pastry in Russian. And so, let’s start with bread.

Watch this video lesson and learn pronunciation of the Russian words:

Bread in Russian is:
Хлеб [HLYEP] bread

Here is an adjective that comes from word “bread”:
Хлебный (adj.) [HLYEB-niy] bread

A couple of examples of how this adjective can be used:
Хлебный квас [HLYEB-niy KVAS] kvass (made from bread)
Хлебный магазин [HLYEB-niy ma-ga-ZEEN] bread store

Types of bread:
Белый хлеб [BYE-liy HLYEP] white bread
Ржаной хлеб [rzha-NOY HLYEP] rye bread

Baking and hand-making yummy treats is a part of Russian culture. Below are some of the most popular types of pastry in Russian:

Выпечка [VI-peech-ka] pastry
Булочка [BOO-lach-ka] roll
Бублик [BOOB-leek] bagel
Рогалик [ra-GA-leek] bagel, croissant
Круассан [kroo-a-SAN] croissant
Пирожок [pee-ra-ZHOK] patty, pasty
Чебурек [chye-boo-RYEK] meat pasty
Пончик [PON-cheek] donut

These are the types of treats you might be offered when you come over for a dinner or a tea:
Печенье [pee-CHYEN’-ye] cookie, biscuit
Пряник [PRYA-neek] spice-cake, honey-cake
Пирожное [pee-ROZH-na-ye] pastry, fancy cake
Кекс [KYEKS] cupcake
Вафли [VAF-lee] waffles
Пирог [pee-ROK] pie
Торт [TORT] cake

Блин [BLEEN] pancake блинчик [BLEEN-cheek] pancake
Оладья [a-LA-d’ya] fritter, thick pancake

Feel free to download the slides of this lesson:

Use this colorful infographic to learn the new words. Feel free to share it!

To continue our conversation about bread, below are a few Russian sayings about bread. One of the most popular sayings is:
Хлеб всему голова. 
Bread is the head of everything.

Хлеб да вода – богатырская еда.
Bread and water is the food of warriors.

Пока есть хлеб да вода – все не беда.
While we have bread and water there is no trouble (everything is fine).

All in all, really what the sayings are trying to say is that as long as you have bread on the table, you will not have any problems.

If you’d like to learn more Russian sayings, here is another article that I’ve published about the sayings – Russian Sayings and Proverbs.

If you would like to make your own блинчики, you can use my recipes that I’ve published earlier: Blinchiki (Russian Crepes/Pancakes) Recipe. Let me know how they turn out!

Well, this is all for today. In the next lesson we will talk about the Russian pronunciation.
Talk to you soon!

The courses of Russian as a foreign language with Russian4real take place online via Skype. The teacher works with adults individually since he is convinced that each person must receive maximum time for practice and professional attention while learning a foreign language.