Hi! I am Vladimir from Ukraine. I have been cooking the daily family bread since I am a kid. This is how we do it:
To make the sour dough:
If you don´t have it already you first have to make the magic sour dough.
Ingredients:
- 1/2l. warm water (40degC. or less)
- 1 big spoon salt
- 3 big spoons sugar
- White flour
- 1 bag yeast
Mix all the ingredients except the flower. Then mix in the flower until you get a jelly consistency.
It then needs to rest for 5-6 days at room temperature.
To make the bread:
- Warm up 1 L water to 40deg C. It´s basically warm water. You should be able to leave your finger in it
- Add 1 big spoon of salt ant 3 big spoons sugar and add your whole dough starter
- Mix until you get jelly consistency
- Save the same amount of sour dough for next bread
- Add oil (olive is best ; ) 50-100cl.
- Add flour until you get a proper dough. This is when comes the hard kneading by hand process!
- Let rest and rise for 5-6h. min at room temperature. A warm place works bet.
- Bake for 30-40mn at 150-200 deg C, You might want to turn the bread around at mid baking.
I usually hit the bread to hear this hollow sound which tells me if the bread is ready. But this takes practice, don´t worry to much about it, people like it more or less cooked and it will be a success anyway! I like to let the bread rest for 1h to make sure it is not too soft but sometime it is hard to wait!
Enjoy!
