This post starts off with a good point about how it’s strange that in our society baking from scratch is viewed as a luxury. It’s weird because baking your own bread is not that hard. Destroy capitalism. Bake your own bread. Anyway, in response Peter Morwood posted these great instructions for making your own bread (more links below):
Here are the links from the post:
Sourdough Starter: How to Make or Obtain a Sourdough Starter
Home Baking Association
Lahey No-Knead Bread Recipe: One Baker’s Experiences So Far
From the Household: The Easiest Bread Recipe with Really Good Results
Peter’s Bread Soup… Made with Peter’s Bread
Source: Peter Morwood
A tip: bread should be made with leaven sourdough based on benign bacteria, not yeast. Using yeast makes any bread you make basically taste like pizza crust. Ok-ish, but boring. Sourdough bacteria give the bread the actual “bready” taste and smell.
Disagreeing. The leavening agent in sourdough starter is indeed yeast: just wild local yeasts, not genetically tailored ones. Anyway, enjoy yours and we’ll enjoy ours (which emphatically does *not* taste or smell like pizza crust). –DD (for PM)
Historically, left over yeast from brewing would be used.
I recommend the series Victorian Bakers – https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5kye5o
This is silly: people have been baking bread for others since medieval times. A huge oven is expensive to run but efficient if you do a ton of baking. Per my grandma, stopping baking bread was a huge relief for her, and her kids wanted the white fluffy stuff instead. It’s really nothing to do with capitalism.