Erzatz bread does not have a constant recipe, since it helped to survive during the war years in conditions of food shortages. It initially consisted of 55% rye flour, 25 wheat, and the rest was supplemented with potato powder. In the absence of these ingredients, they were replaced by other products left over from grinding or legumes.
Pick your recipe
Despite the fact that from time immemorial, the addition of waste products accompanying its production, as well as quinoa, reeds, acorns and needles, to the full-fledged cereal flour has been practiced in Russia, such surrogate bread in Russia is indicated by the non-Russian prefix "ersatz".
From the field of linguistics
Der Ersatz, of course, is not a prefix, but a full-fledged German word that translates as "replacement, compensation" or in military terminology - "replenishment". Over time, it began to be used in the sense of a substitute for something. However, to consider that the concept of ersatz bread appeared precisely in the hungry years of the First World War in Germany is not entirely correct. Then the Germans called the bread Kriegsbrot. It was quite edible and consisted of 80% of the rye-wheat mixture, with a predominance of rye flour. 20% of potato powder was added to it, sugar and fat were present in the composition.
It must be admitted that it was the Germans who established the industrial production of defective products using substitutes. Thanks to worthy developments in the field of chemistry, in addition to food, synthetic rubber and benzene appeared during the First World War as a substitute for fuel oil.
Now it’s hard to restore a reliable date when substitutes came into existence under the name ersatz, but today this term is not simply called substitutes for anything, namely, inferior analogues. Not only ersatz bread is known, but ersatz sausage, ersatz leather, ersatz wool, weapons and fuel.