A friend living in New York said that "suddenly all the bitches remembered how to bake and left me without yeast"! I laughed at first but then I thought that here too, in London, yeast has disappeared from the shelves since isolation day one! So maybe it is time to bring back my grandma's wisdom and give you the recipe for the traditional Greek sourdough that I always keep in my home and that will last you forever!
Getting ready to cope with isolation we bought all the flour and yeast from the supermarkets at once and the industry seems to be staggering to supply for more. In most countries, #yeast is an impossible ingredient to find since everyone needs their favorite pizza or bread to cope with many... many days inside. Especially families with small children feel the need to always be prepared and have something filling for the kids.
This is because bread and dough are registered in our subconscious as the food that keeps us alive.
The reasons are plenty for this. First, is the hunger that humanity has had to cope with over the ages, where bread was the easy way to be fed since it was the cheapest way to be fed - the food of the poor as we call it. This is embedded deep in our 'memory DNA' as I named it, and it makes us need bread whenever we feel threatened. The other factor is the food pyramid since the mid last century when it was decided that grains, therefor bread, should be the number one ingredient in our diet for healthy living, something that ended up causing all the obesity phenomena in the western world.
It is then righteous to ask 'if the bread is bad for us then why do we need a recipe for sourdough?'
The answer lies in one ancient secret. Everything is good for you if it's a pure ingredient.
So the old Greek traditional recipe for #sourdough seems to be a solution that will not only help now, but it will last forever giving a much better quality to your food.
Since the 5th millennia BC, sourdough bread was considered sacred, a gift from Goddess Demeter (Goddess of Harvest & Agriculture, Ancient Greek name: Δημήτηρ, modern Greek name: Dimitra), and one of the most important sources for Galactobacilli intake. Galactobacilli is a detailed scientific word in Greek describing the good bacteria that we have and must maintain is our system. The most common word in English is Lactobacilli. They are created by fermentation and they belong to the Terrabacteria group and more specifically to the bacteria family of Erysipelotrichaceae. Erysipelotrichaceae are meant to support a healthy gut but they must exist in certain numbers because they have been found, for example, to be enriched in colorectal cancer and to be in significantly decreased levels in patients who experienced Crohn's disease or a recurrence of it.
It seems that the key is always the balance, the Harmony between body and bacteria that will determine good health. And for this, here comes sourdough along with yogurt, an ancient knowledge, to keep this balance and the right numbers.
Until the 19th sourdough was the only technique used to make bread. After that, bread kind of lost its purpose and its healthy way of preparation. But today we still have the knowledge to make the right bread.
Recipe:
-Before even thinking of flour it is very important to prepare the #water. Water needs to be pure and it needs to play the role of a preservative also. So choose spring water with no chemicals in a glass bottle. Tap water is often treated too heavily and this will harm the pureness of our sourdough. You need to have this
water every time you feed the dough.
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You will understand that as we proceed.
-Put a glass of this water in a glass jar with a lid. Inside put a handful of #basil leaves.
Basil needs to be organic and preferably the Greek #basil with the small leaves; in some villages in Greece, they prefer its small white flowers for this procedure.
Learn about the secrets of basil here
Of course, I am giving you the best way but this doesn't mean that you can not do it with some basil from the supermarket. Just make sure it is organic.
-Put the lid on and leave for 24 hours.
-After 24 hours take the basil out and pour the water into a bowl.
-Add flour.
You need to add as much flour as it takes to make a soft dough. Neither runny nor hard. Just a soft dough that can be shaped into a small round bread.
-Place the dough in a glass bowl, cover it with a towel, and place above the towel the basil you took out of the water.
-Put it in a warm place with a stable temperature covered with blankets for 3 days.
-On day 4 the dough will have tripled or more in size and it will have a crust on top.
-Take the crust off. Throw it away along with the #basil.
-The dough will be soft and sticky. Put it in a jar and in the fridge.
-When it's time to use it see the sourdough bread recipe.
#Tip: Make sure that you choose the right flour. Hard ancient flours with no chemicals and definitely unbleached are the ideal choice for sourdough. They are high in proteins and the best for your body.
#Fact: Rye flour is the closest kind to the ancient grains since it is the descendant of the wild rye with small seeds coming from Anatolia. Today there is archeological evidence that wild rye is used for over 10000 years. Ancient Greeks, especially in Minor Asia, would use it widely along with other ancient grains like emmer wheat (Turgidum Dicoccum), produced in mainland Greece and South Italy and durum wheat (Triticum Turgidum). Wild emmer wheat is found to be used for over 15000 years from archeological evidence found in Franchthi Cave in the eastern Peloponnese in Greece. Durum wheat derived from the domesticated emmer wheat about 10000 years ago along the Mediterranean and it is the predecessor of semolina.
Any flour can be used to make your sourdough but is it worth the trouble if your choice of flour is from the white wheat, which is based on chemistry and chemicals just to look nice? I would say no! You have plenty of choices that try to resemble ancient grains. You can use Spelt, Rye, Zea (greek ancient Spelt), or even white hard organic unbleached #flour and whole wheat flour.
Gallactobacilli will be in their best by using the right flour and they will help your body slow down the pace in which sugars are metabolized. They will help you keep your Harmony!
*Danai Fassouli is a writer, self-development, Feng Shui and ancient physiognomy consultant, and a healer traveling around the world with the sole purpose to decode the ancient sacred truths and use them for her personal development as well as to spread them to all women that want to work for their own health of the mind, body, and soul. Contact Danai for consultation here.
*The articles are purely informative and do not replace the nutritionist; doctor and/or the psychologist and generally any specialist in physical and mental health.