#FlourReport A bunch of people have asked to see how we make the simple bread I’m always showing. It uses yeast collected out in nature, and small batch stone ground grains. My idea was to taste the bread we read about in ancient texts. Here’s how I do it: 
The total ingredients are: 150g naturally collected yeast, 250g water, 25-30g olive oil, and 10g salt. Here you see the oil and water, with the bubbly natural yeast and bacteria on the left.
Adding the flour to the water, oil, and yeast. Raising the yeast is not unlike having a pet, and we can talk about it later. The swirly metal thing is for mixing this stage.
Here’s what you get after the first mixing. It’s not unlike a snot ball. However the key thing is that, because there are so few ingredients, all the quality and flavor is really down to technique, and this was the hard lesson. So making good snot is critical.
Here is the start of the second loaf, which is Rye. The yeast is floating on the water and oil, which indicates that it’s alive and well, as it’s density is low due to the gas generated by the microbes. This yeast has been raised eating only rye flour, which is why it’s brown.
Here’s what the Rye snotball looks like.
The snotballs are then left to sit for about 45 minutes, so that the water and microorganisms can propagate all around into the dough. This has a fancy name: Autolyzing. Now you sound smart.
You may have noticed the missing last ingredient. This is 10g of sea salt, which we add after the autolyzing is all autolyzed. This is because it kills some of the microbes (which is why salt is a preservative). We then knead until the dough is springy.
Now we do two cycles of resting for 45 minutes and then kneading. Here the dough is in a temperature controlled box, at 80f, because it’s been cold here and you want to keep it warm at this point. Basically we are stretching the gluten molecules and distributing nutrients.
Now it’s ready to become loaves. Here are some quaint wooden baskets. We rub them liberally with flour, then pop the dough into them. There’s a bit more to it but that’s the gist.
We cover the baskets with a tea cloth, and go to bed. (Yes this is a proper tea cloth.)
Well it’s eeearly morning, and we wake up and set the oven to 500f, and check to see if the dough has risen. It has!
Once the oven is stable, we pop the dough out of the baskets and onto metal sheets with some cornmeal to prevent sticking, and put them in the oven. I also throw a couple ice cubes in, which helps the outside of the loaves stay elastic as they “pop” due to the gas heating up.
...and here is the reward for all that work. On the left is the Rye, the right is wheat. You can see the Rye popped itself apart a bit. The smell is excellent, I’ll report on flavor after they cool. Thanks for reading! Sorry if it’s boring! #BreadNerd
