Em hotep everybody *henu*
Since years I've been interested in the creation of bread and beer the traditional way. In other words: How did my ancestors do it? How is it done without any industrialisation, how can I do it at home? Over the time I've been gathering information and experience about these things and over a year now I make my own bread. I've already had some kind of honey-brew-beer done, but it got a bit … forgotten, because I lagged enough input to get a clear idea how to proceed.
But that changed! Got some tests running already and am very curious what the results will be like.
My goal was to find an easy way to get these things done at home with very little money and very little effort. Wesir also pushed me a little to do this thread... and I figured I should do it in steps, post by post, because it would be waaay too much to post everything in a single novel of a starting post. So let us begin with the very basics.

Sourdough
This is a very interesting kind of yeast that is not really found anywhere in the stores novadays. Simply because this yeast is slow, it takes longer to grow and to make the bread-dough rise. It needs time. But this turns into an up for us! Because it needs time, it also doesn't mind if you forget it a day or two and you don't need to watch it permanently. Also: Once the sourdough is established, it can't go bad. Neither can the bread done with it. Like yeast it is a kind of mushroom-culture thingy. Rot is too. But sourdough is so strong that all other kinds of rot-bacteria can't manifest. In other words: The bread I make with it can't run to seeds, after weeks it's just dry but still edible.
To establish your own sourdough you need this:
- rye flour
- warm water (warm to the feel of your palm, more like 'lukewarm')
The flour needs to be finely grounded. I have no idea how it is done in different countries! In Germany, there's a number on the package, the higher the number the finer the flour. But, at the same time, higher is 'just' better, not ultimately necessary.
Now if you've gotten both, take 100g each and mix them into a bowl. Cover it with a towel.
Done.

Repeat each day for the first week, thus you'll have a sourdough of 1400g at the end. But before I got into numbers, here's what you need to take care of:
Smell the dough each day. As the name indicates, it is supposed to develop a sour odour. If it smells bad, like something rotting, that it does just that. Sadly it can happen. It's helpful to have a room temperature of above 20°C and no drafts (if that's the right word, no air blowing through the room that might cool the bowl).
It's a matter of luck in the end, but in most of the cases your sourdough should go well and develop a healthy brown colour. And remember: Once it's established, it can't go bad. You can actually dry the entire thing to store it for years, just put the dry crisps into water and, tada, new sourdough.

You need to make a bread from the sourdough after the week. Obviously because you've got three pounds of stuff in a bowl that needs feeding to grow even more! I'll thus get to the how-to-do-first-bread in a moment.
There are a few things left to mention. Once your dough is established you should keep an eye out how much of it you need. The idea is that from our 1400g of dough you take 1000g for a 2kg bread, and leave the 400g to feeding. Thus the culture gets stronger over time.
Because of the amount of dough you might want to use 50g of flour and water, starting the third day of your first week. Thus you'll have 900g at the end of the week, thus we'll take 500g for our first 1kg bread, which is a fairer size for a first-test bread.

If you ever have more dough than you need but don't want to bake, just remember to mix it once per day. Or skip it entirely for up to two days, but remember to add more water afterwards to become a decent consistency. (Doing this for a year now, I don't even measure it anymore, I just add flour and water as I feel right because I've developed an eye for what it is supposed to be like and likewise others who do this for so long will. It's pretty easy, honestly.
That also means that your first bread is going to suck.

That's not because you're a bad baker, but because the sourdough hasn't developed any strength yet. It will nonetheless taste good, but the dough won't risely entirely, thus the bread will end up a bit tough. If it's hard to chew, break it into pieces and boil it in water together with salt, pepper, onions, garlic and some soup-herbs of your liking → tada, tastey breadsoup.
Your first bread.
I want to add here that the sourdough is fairly flexible. I've done quite a bit of bread meanwhile, ranging from spicey pepper-bread over herb-bread to sweet fruit-bread. But for now let's stick with the most basic of all basics from which all other recipes diverge.
500g sourdough
400g wheat flour
100ml warm water (like above)
2 pinch of salt
Mix all of this together in a bowl and cover with a towel.
- The dough is supposed to be nonesticky, but you might want to have something prepared to free your fingers off the dough while it is sticky. If the whole dough is mixed and doesn't stick to your hand: good! If it's still sticky: Add flour until it isn't anymore.
- on the other end: If the dough isn't wet enough to bind all the flour, add water, but very carefully! A sip of water can be enough.

Let the dough rise for 2 hours (later, when the dough is stronger, 1 hour is enough)
Prepare a baking pan by putting fat or oil on the surface, just enough to 'lubricate it'
- or -
have a baking tray prepared fat or baking paper.
Take your dough and kneed it thoroughly again. Put it into the baking pan or roll and shape it into a typical bread on the baking tray.
Add a towel and leave it to rise again for anther 2 hours (same as above, faster once the dough is stronger)
Now for the tricky part!
I prefer baking with air circulation.
Take the towel off your bread and wetten the surface with water.
Put a heat-proof bowl or cup of water into the oven
Put your bread in the oven
Put the heat to 230°C and bake it for 30 minutes.
After that, lower the heat to 200°C, open the oven for about a minute to let the stored heat out, close the oven and bake for another 10 minutes.
After that, lower the heat to 170°C, open the oven for about a minute to let the stored heat out, close the oven and bake for another 10 minutes.
Done! Take your bread out (careful, damn hot) and wetten the surface again. Let it cool for at least another hour, for the heat inside is still working on it.
Now it's ready to be eaten.

So far, so good.
I'll leave the thread like this for a while and want to see first if people are interested in this. If so, I'm glad to share more recipes. Also this is very important, because you need to know these two steps of making your own homemade bread to do the traditional beer I'm having here. But before that I need to wait what my experiments will turn out like. To tell you the least: They taste interestingly well! Just need to see which of these need the least amount of work in the long run.

Senebty
Marukay
edit 1.1 - added information about dough stickyness