This is a bit of an unusual post for me, but my wife has been experimenting with baking her own bread for a long time and it's just a mess (see photo) and since it might come in handy very soon, I'd like to share it with you.
Yeast is the basis and the great thing about it is that then you don't need any yeast, which may not be available soon, and you can make do only with flour, from which you can make the yeast itself.
Sourdough production
You will need
boiled and cooled water
rye flour
clean tall glass (sterilized with hot water)
towel
rubber band
and also a moment of time 5 consecutive days.
1 day: Pour 100 g of flour into a tall glass and add 120 ml of boiled and cooled water, mix, cover with a tea towel, secure it to the neck of the glass with a rubber band and let it rest in the kitchen at room temperature. That's all for today.
Day 2: Open the jar and sprinkle 50 g of flour into it and add 100 ml of water (again boiled and cooled). Mix thoroughly, cover and leave in a warm place.
Day 3: Do the same as the next day, only half of the water will be enough - i.e. 50 ml.
Day 4: The procedure will be exactly the same as the third day.
Day 5: You have a ready "starter mixture" - characteristic sour smell, appearance-like soft dough. Here you need to LEAVE - prepare flour and water in a 1:1 ratio (e.g. 150 9 flour: and 150 ml of water) and add to 50 g of "starter mix". Mix and leave for 12 hours - preferably at a temperature between 10 and 20 °C.
The yeast is ready and you can bake…
(that is, in theory, we will only manage to make about a third loaf of bread - the yeast is still ripening)
How to care for yeast and maintain it?
You don't need to make a new yeast before each time you bake bread. Take two spoonfuls of sourdough from the sourdough you have created, put it in a sterilized jar and seal it. Store it in the refrigerator. It will be there waiting for your next baking. But not completely without your care. Once a week you need to take care of the yeast - feed it. Take approx. 5 g of leaven, add 20 ml of water (boiled again and cooled) and 20 g of flour - the same flour that you used to make the leaven. Close the jar, but do not return it to the refrigerator. Leave it in the kitchen at room temperature for 24 hours. This will allow the yeast to ferment and then return the jar to the refrigerator. This feeding of the yeast needs to be done regularly in order to keep the yeast "alive and in a fit form".
Bread recipe
Yeast is the most important thing, and you can use any recipe for the baking itself, but this one has worked well for us.
https://recepty.cuketka.cz/cesky-chleb/
+Everyone should collect and print recipes for bread and ways to make it. And in general, all instructions/advice etc. keep either in books or printed from the internet. And you can bake bread without an oven, for example: bread from a (cast iron) pan, outside on a stick, on coals, baking on the bent metal side of a hoe (put the hoe next to the fire and let the hot iron bake one side of the hoe while the heat from the fire bakes the other side)..
E.g. many Italian bread recipes call for a teaspoon to a tablespoon of olive oil to be mixed into the dough, I will add here that most bread shops ignore this - it increases the cost and they don't want that. BUT the bread will keep for days without going hard, plus it toasts and tastes better. That's just a side note..
Don't forget to use good quality salt that doesn't have iodine, which is toxic to yeast, so the bread doesn't rise well. Yeast also consumes the gluten and partially digests the wheat for you!