Great and Easy Bread Recipe

Healthy living, living close to nature becomes more and more popular. We focus more on fitness and free time activities, not forgetting about proper nutrition. Yeah, natural, free from conservatives food is one of the keys to your health and well-being.

Following this trend I also turned my attention to food - or in this particular case - to bread. In many cultures and throughout the ages bread was the basic meal component. So let us see, how can we make our own aromatic, old-fashioned bread at home

At the shelves of a mall or supermarket we usually notice "hundreds" of bread types. On each loaf there is (or should be) an information about the ingredients. There are many of them. Besides flour and water there are:

-acidity regulators (vinegar, acetic acid, citric acid, sodium diacetate),

-preservatives (calcium propionate),

-emulsifiers (lecithin, sodium stearoyl lactylate, glycerol monostearate, diglycerides),

-conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium dioxide, calcium iodate, potassium iodate, ammonium sulfate, potassium persulfate, ammonium persulfate, calcium sulfate, azodicarbonamide ).

Yummy, isnt it? Like in a small chemical factory.

Bread eaten by our ancestors consisted of basically of flour, water and salt. No more than that. Was tasty and could be preserved for some time. Let's see how this was possible.

As we said before, to make bread we need flour and water. This is not entirely true, because in order to make the bread dough to raise we need an ingredient producing small gas bubbles inside the dough. This secret ingredient can be yeast (which is relatively modern invention) or sourdough starter, used for thousands of years

What is sourdough? Basically a fermented flour. Controlled fermentations is the same process known from production of cheese, pickles, sauerkraut etc

Sourdough is easy to make and simple - it consists only of flour and water. How to make it?

- Day 1: Take half a cup of rye flour, put it in a jar, add half a cup of lukewarm water and make a loose mixture. Put the jar in a warm place (25 degrees Celsius).

- Day 2: Add four table spoons of flour and a little bit of water, stir and leave it in peace.

- Day 3: You will probably see the first signs of "life" in your sourdough mother mixture - small air bobbles. Add four table spoons of flour and a little bit of water, stir and leave it in peace.

- Repeat the procedure with adding flour and water in the next couple of days. When the mother dough is mature (very "lively" and smelling a little sour) you can move to the next stage and make your bread

You need to prepare sourdough starter only once. Just remember to save some dough during bread baking process and keep it alive by feeding it with flour from time to time, until the next baking round comes.

This is how I make it. I take:

400 g rye sourdough starter

600 g wheat flour (or rye or mixed)

200 g lukewarm water

2 full tea spoons salt

2 tea spoons of honey

I put rye starter, flour, honey previously dissolved in some water and salt in a bowl and add so much water to have the right consistence of the dough or a bit looser. By right consistence I mean one similar to pizza dough. I work a little bit with the dough (longer if it is wheat dough). If you want, you can add linseed, pumkin seed, caraway etc. Put the dough in a baking form and leave it in a warm place to raise.

Depending on temperature and strength of the starter the raising process will take a couple of hours.

After the dough has raised, put it in the own preheated to 180C for about 45-50min. After this time your bread should be baked. You can take it out of the own and check it by taking out of the baking form, turning upside-down and

Did you ever tried to bake your own bread? Do you have your favorite recipe? Do you prefer light, wheat bread or rather darker one, from rye flour?