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Baking of bread

You want to bake your own bread? Here are good instructions to bake bread at home from Aive Luigela, a nutrition specialist.

Firstly, you should prepare leaven

Leaven is the most important ingredient in baking of bread. You cannot buy it in the store but you can make suitable leaven yourself. To make this, put 2–3 hard slices of bread into water to soak, make them fine if they are soft, add some rye flour, sugar and buttermilk, and mix all ingredients – almost creaming them – into porridge-like mass. It is advisable to beat the mixture with wooden spoon because enough air will get into leaven then. Some rye flour should be sprinkled over leaven.

Leaven is stored in a warm place under the towel. You should let leaven to sour long enough but not longer than two days first time. Ready-made leaven can stay in a cold place much longer; it can also be stored in a freezer. The first bread baking may not succeed because leaven you made yourself has not completely soured yet. Leaven is ready when leaven dough goes down after it has risen.

Loaves of bread into the oven

When dough is sour enough, risen in the container and gone down again, it must be beaten once again. Then salt, caraways or other ingredients and the rest of flour should be added. You must knead until dough becomes sufficiently tough and comes unstuck from the walls of the container. Ready-made dough should be smoothened, soured with some rye flour and left coated in a warm place for two more hours in order to let it rise.

Loaves of bread are moulded with hands moistened in water and left to rise on a baking sheet or a pan that has been smeared with fat for a while before baking. Bread will be baked within 1.5–2 hours.

Do not forget to keep a small piece of dough (about 100 g) for leaven at the end of baking. Sour plenty of rye flour on leaven, put the lid on the container and keep it until the next baking of bread in a cold place, e.g. in a fridge.


Let dough thrive

The most common recipe for bread dough is the following:


2 kg of good dry rye flour

1.5 l of lukewarm water

1–2 teaspoonfuls of salt

Caraways, nuts, sesame seeds, bran, pieces of ham or bacon, vegetables or other additions

Baking bread first time, amount of all ingredients should be halved because leaven has not enough strength yet. Later this amount will give approximately three loaves of bread, 1 kg each. Bread flour and container should be at least at room temperature before baking. Semifluid dough is mixed creaming lukewarm water, a half of rye flour and leaven with wooden spoon. Active mixing is important because more air can enter into dough and leaven becomes stronger. Dough should be soured over with thick layer of flour and cover the container with the towel. The duration of dough souring is approximately 12–17 hours in a warmer room, and about 20 hours in a colder room.