I baked my first loaf of bread several years ago. And I got so inspired with the process that I began to bake bread regularly (once every three days). At present, I haven't made bread over some period of time. Still, I would like to renew this captivating occupation. And now I want to tell you about my experience.
The decision to bake yeast-free bread in the oven was not spontaneous: I was going towards this gradually, not really believing that something really edible could turn out. But people had baked bread somehow before yeast was invented. They made bread on sourdough. And I began to look through recipes on the Internet. You can find lots of things there - both good and bad. When I got tired of studying, I decided that it was time to try it - something would work out anyway!
It came out that sourdough starter could be made from almost anything. For example, from hops, milk, or simply from flour. I thought that the simpler the better, and made a sourdough starter from wheat flour, but as it turned out, it was not so easy, so I had to change it to rye flour. It is exactly the rye flour that the starter is most often made from, since fermentation processes in it go faster than in the wheat one. But you also need to be patient with rye flour, as it takes time (1-2 months) before your dough starts to rise well on that sourdough starter. So, how to make a sourdough starter on rye flour?
Take, for example, 2 tablespoons of flour, pour it into a clean glass jar (the main thing is that dishes and cutlery should not be metal), add cold boiled water there (I haven’t done it with raw water yet), stir it thoroughly (it should look like sour cream in consistency), cover the jar with some thin, breathable cloth, fix the cloth with an elastic band on the neck of the jar and put the jar somewhere (room temperature, no ovens or refrigerators). And then everything is simple: every day you need to remove (throw away) half of the starter, and then add to the starter in the jar the same amount of flour as was removed, add some water, so that the same consistency of sour cream is achieved again. If it is not possible to add a new portion of flour every day and you want to take a break, then you can put the jar in the refrigerator and take it out when you are ready to keep on doing that again. So, continue to replace part of the sourdough starter with flour and water every day for about a month. How can you understand that the starter is working? You will see bubbles in it. And the more time passes, the more bubbles will appear, and the higher the starter will rise. Over time, the sourdough starter will become mature and it will be possible to add more flour and some warm water to the starter and make a leaven to bake bread from. If there is not enough starter in the leaven or if the starter is not active enough, the bread will not rise well. But if the leaven contains a lot of it or if the starter is not good enough, then the bread will turn out too sour. And one more thing: mold may appear in the jar. In this case, I simply put the starter into a clean jar and then continued all the usual manipulations.
Here you go. After four weeks, you can try to bake bread. To bake bread, you need to take part of the sourdough starter (say, 5 tablespoons), dilute it with warm water (1 cup), add some wheat flour (5-10 tablespoons) and a little sugar (1 teaspoon). Mix everything. The consistency should be quite liquid. Cover the mixture with a towel and wait until the leaven begins to bubble and rise slightly (1-2 hours). Then add about half a glass of warm water with salt dissolved in it (1-1.5 teaspoons) and start to gradually mix in wheat flour, stirring the dough thoroughly. When it stops sticking so much to your hands, you need to form a ball out of it, grease its surface with sunflower oil, cover the dough with a towel and wait until the dough has approximately doubled in size. After that, knead it again with your hands and put it on a baking sheet greased with sunflower oil. Put it there either whole or divide the dough into several parts and roll them into balls. First, bake the bread at high temperature in a preheated oven, and then - alternating high and low temperatures. A whole loaf of bread will have been baked in 50-60 minutes, and the small rolls - 30-40. The bread is ready when you hear a hollow sound when you tap it. Put the baking sheet with the bread on the table, cover it with a towel (if you want the bread to be soft). You can additionally grease the bread with butter. That's it! Wait until it cools down - now you can eat it.
I would like to say that, probably, there is no single recipe suitable for everyone. So, do experiments! Both with ingredients and with proportions. Try baking bread with different kinds of flour. And don't be upset if something goes wrong while making the bread. I just want to warn you that yeast-free homemade bread is very different from what we buy in a store. It does not smell like yeast and, in general, smells quite differently - like homemade pastry. Yeast bread is tasteless, but this one has a distinct sour taste. Besides, it is much longer stored and does not become moldy on the third day. They also say that it is good for health, unlike yeast. However, someone may not like this bread because of its slightly weird taste, to their opinion.
I can't speak for others, but I think that it's hard not to love homemade pastry. It is hundreds of times more tasty and healthy. Baking bread is a very exciting and at the same time relaxing process. It's like meditation, I would say. Sheer benefit - both for the body and the soul. Try to make sourdough bread, you will definitely like it!
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