We bake this bread once a week using the same leaven, home-made six years ago. We store the leaven in the refrigerator, in a jar covered with a cotton cloth tightened with a rubber band. The leaven is able to survive when we go away, even for four to six weeks, but it dries up and becomes less active. On these occasions it can be revived by adding more sugar to the bread dough when baking.

You have to watch for any signs of mold; For example, apparently, the leaven may turn orange. In such cases it becomes poison and must be thrown away. Ours got moldy once in nine years of baking.

The nice thing about sourdough is, that, unlike the store bought yeasts, it always works. The dough for sourdough bread will always rise. Sometimes it may just need a little more time.

Sourdough bread

baked by Julia

1 loaf

4 cups (55 dag) of wheat flour (including 1 cup of whole grain bread flour, not necessarily wheat). We use any kind of fine flour we can get our hands on.

1/2 cup of any bran or 1 cup of oats

1 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons of sugar (we use wet golden sugar with molasses)

1 teaspoon of whole cumin seeds 

2 cups of lukewarm water

homemade sourdough (leaven) (we leave 3 tablespoons of dough each time we bake bread for the next time)

Seeds of your choice. In our kitchen, we use sunflower seeds or oats to sprinkle the top of the bread. We stopped adding any seeds to the bread dough itself because once we happened to have stale sesame seeds, which, remaining in the leaven, were transferred to the next loaves.

1. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. In a smaller bowl, mix the sourdough leaven (3 tablespoons of dough left from the previous baking) with lukewarm water using your hand. Add to a large bowl and mix. Kneading is not necessary, but if you do it for a few minutes, the dough rises better.
3. Cover with a cloth and leave in a turned-off oven for 2 hours. You can turn on the oven light to make it a little warmer.
4. After 2 hours, put 3 tablespoons of dough into the jar as a leaven for the next bread. Put the rest of the dough into the pan. Sprinkle with the seeds of your choice and leave in a turned-off oven for about 4 – 6 hours. We light the oven lamp to make it warmer. We use a pan that does not need to be greased. 
5. When the dough rises to the top of the pan, set the temperature to 400F (200C) and bake for 1 hour from the moment the oven is turned on.

Bread for mama
Bread for Bubu
Bread for Julia
For you and me
Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy.