Learning how to make bread is not only about bread making, or just learning one more new skill. If you make bread, you will learn about history, about ingredients, about time, about cooking and about yourself.

If you make bread, you make something from almost nothing. You have to make everything from scratch, to make it alive. You have to do the magic, and that is how you will learn about yourself.

You use your hands to mix the ingredients, to stretch the dough to make the gluten work. If you made a good sourdough, and you use quality ingredients, you do not have anything else to do, just keep an eye on what is happening in a glass bowl in your kitchen and mix it sometimes. You have to stay at home, because it almost takes a whole day to make a loaf of bread, but meanwhile you are free to do other things.

The history of  bread is one of the longest from all the foods we have, what humans started to make in order to survive. The oldest bread was probably made like 4000 years ago in Egypt. And here we are in 2019 and we still have the knowledge of bread making, isn't fascinating? Bread is still one of the most basic foods, what humans eat every day  all around the planet, mainly from wheat flours, but also from corn, barley, rye, oat, spelt....

When you make bread, you use one of the oldest, still existing cooking techniques, but still, you make it for only the very loved ones, for a very few people.

Before eating your own bread. For me it is one of the biggest pleasure taking it out from the oven and waiting for cutting it, is almost as exciting as Christmas eve...

While eating the bread.The health benefits of sourdough bread are countless. Even if you didn't eat a lot of bread before, you should definitely try this one, and realize the changes on your own body. Sourdough bread is a superfood. It is easy to digest, and it has a low glycemic index. It is alive, full with "good" bacterias, and that is exactly what our guts need. And as results we have a stronger intestinal flora,  a stronger immune system.

After eating the bread. You never throw away, not even the smallest piece of it which was left. You will just naturally find a way to use it. Own bread, no food waste. And of course you can be proud of yourself! You made a nutritious and beautiful loaf of bread, from flour, water and salt. You did not buy a bread, you made a bread! You can call it religion, history, or just cooking.

Let's bake!

I make it on two different ways. It depends, if I forget to do the first step the day before baking or not...

So you can make a leaven the day before baking, or on the day, earlier. From these amount of ingredients, you will have two loafs of bread. I think, it is more or less enough for a week. I usually cut them into pieces and freeze them. When I need them, I take them out the night before, or re-bake them in the morning, so it is fresh and warm (the last one usually happens at weekends, when I have time to enjoy fresh, warm bread...).

leaven

To make the leaven you need 20 grams of sourdough, 50 grams of white flour, 50 grams of whole grain flour and 100 grams of warm water. Mix it, cover it until the morning. If you do it on the day, let it sit for an hour or so.

If you plan your bread-baking day well, if you plan your day around baking, it is not going to be a problem. I would say it takes about 8 hours, all in all, from mixing the ingredients, until taking it out from the oven. The actual work is about 30 minutes. So just count with this, but of course, it depends on the temperature, the humidity, mood and how you do it...and on many more things.

ingredients

800 grams whole grain flour

200 grams rye flour

850 grams warm water

25 grams of salt

Mix all the ingredients with the leaven, leave it rest for 20 minutes. Meanwhile mix the salt in some warm water, add to the dough. Every hour pull the dough from bottom to the top (wet your hands). Turn the bowl, so you lift and stretch the dough from each side. It takes about 10 seconds. Cover, leave it to rest for an other hour. Repeat this for 4 to 6 times, so for 4 to 6 hours. As it goes on, you will feel, how the structure is made, how the dough gets more and more flexible. In the end, the dough wants to stick to itself more, than to the bowl or to your hands.

Fold and gently knead the dough on a floured, wooden surface, divide it into 2 parts. Cover and let them rest for 30 minutes.

Place them into floured proofing baskets for 2 to 3 hours. Preheat the oven to 230 degrees. Place your breads into a floured baking tray (possibly the size of the bread). Score the top of the bread and sprinkle with water. Bake with a cover for 25 minutes, without cover for an other 25 minutes. Check for hollow, percussive sound on the bottom of the bread. Do not forget to wait one hour before cutting!