Peasant Bread FAQ Course—by Serene

Welcome! I’m your host, Serene… true, artisan sourdough nerd and lover. This course will give you all the details necessary to become an expert at making the gut-healthiest bread on earth . . . yep . . . that’s Peasant Bread, and you’ll come to believe me by the end of this course. You might find this course like a cross between a fireside chat and a degree in sourdough making. I’ve envisioned all the questions you might have and many of the challenges you may face, and I will answer them all… one by one.

There are five steps to the cycle of Peasant Bread making. This course is divided into seven sections. It begins by getting you ready, followed by each of the five bread-making steps, and then the final section deals with any extra questions you may have.

Section 1—Get Ready

Section 2—Sleeping Sue

Section 3—Cracked Rye Starter

Section 4—Bread Soak

Section 5—In-Pan Ferment

Section 6—The Bake

Section 7—Niggling Questions and Concerns

SECTION 1—GET READY

Why Cracked Grains?

In Section 2, you’ll read about Sleeping Sue. She gets fed fine whole rye flour, so you’ll need some of that on hand. By “fine,” I just mean regular milled flour. This is in contrast to “cracked,” which is a coarse grind. Peasant Bread (the way I make it) uses both cracked whole rye and spelt grains. Just know that you don’t have to use cracked grain, though. If you don’t have your own grinder or just prefer regular-sized flour, you can still make this bread. Your bread will still be incredibly healthy; the texture of your bread will just be a little different… not quite as “peasanty,” but the flavor will still be wonderful.

The reason I use cracked flour for Peasant Bread, though, is not only because it creates this incredible chewy and almost nutty texture, but because it further slows down the blood sugar response. Being super fermented and using only ancient grains, this bread is already gentle on blood sugar levels, but the larger the particle size of flour used, the slower your body extracts the glucose, so this makes using cracked grain with Peasant Bread even more gentle. I eat this coarse, cracked fermented bread as my mainstay and then enjoy finely milled, fully whole grain fermented bread on the weekends (which I call Shabbat Bread) and for special dinners and occasions.

Peasant Bread is much quicker and easier to make, though. It might seem more involved the first time around, but it becomes such an easy flow to life the more you do it. Even though it has greater health benefits due to being cracked and containing a larger portion of slow-burning rye (between the starter and the flour) than spelt, the ease of making it is the lazier reason why I live mostly on Peasant Bread.

If your family has been used to regular bread, though… say, store-bought white bread… it may take a little time to get used to the chewy, cracked grain texture plus the more sour taste of the peasant kind. Know that both of these are excellent for your challenging pause season, but if your family doesn’t care as much about reversing insulin resistance as you do, and they didn’t grow up with this bread as mine has, you could perhaps try to ease them in by not having quite such a coarse grind of grain at first. If you have a grinder, consider using a finer grind if you want them to learn to love this bread at first, then perhaps… slowly coarsen up the grind over time and slow cook them into loving it! A word about younger children . . . starting them on this bread at a young age is excellent not only for their gut, overall health, and immune system . . . but also for the structure of their mouths and jaws. Children these days do not have to chew as much as in times past when coarser grinds of grain were the norm. This lack of thorough chewing prevents proper jaw structure and facial fitness. Learning to do things such as chomp on carrots and eat Peasant Bread as their daily fare can help children develop excellent jaw structure throughout their lives.

How do I obtain cracked grain?

Where do I purchase grains and flours?

I purchase all my grains at Azure Standard.  You can also buy pre-ground rye and spelt flour there. Of course, there are other places online to purchase grains and flour. Just be sure they are in whole-grain form.

Can you suggest a grinder?

The grinder I use for my Peasant Bread is a Mill-Rite electric grain mill from the Retsel Corporation. It is a solid metal dinosaur of a thing. It is indestructible and will be able to be passed down to your great-grandchildren for sure. I have no affiliation with this company except to say you will not waste your money on this purchase. You can grind fine to very coarse flour by tightening or loosening the two stones that swivel together when the motor runs. If you don’t have this grinder, no worries, just use what you have and opt for the coarsest setting.

While we are on the subject of suggesting grain mills, if budget isn’t a concern and you don’t want to have to adjust your grinder for finer grain breads, I use the Wonder Mill  for fast grinding for my finer flour loaves. Of course, owning two grinders is not necessary; my husband is just wonderful about furnishing me with things I mention I would love for my hobbies and passions. Two grinders let me keep one on a coarse setting for my Peasant Bread and Peasant Protein Muffins, and the other on a fine setting for all my others.

How can I manage all the grinding?

In my mind, the key to sustainable bread-making is bulk grinding. I grind just one afternoon for the month. I find grinding too often very annoying with my super busy schedule. Getting out the grinder every week and making a floury mess on the counter can ruin a long-term bread-making plan, especially if you are busy. So instead, I grind five buckets’ worth of bread at a time for my Peasant Bread needs (I’ll talk about the “why” and “where to get” of buckets soon). Each batch of prepped flour goes in one bucket, so this means I have enough for four weeks of bread waiting in buckets with their lids tightly closed. That’s 24 loaves for our family (LOL) plus one extra bucket in case the first week of the next month is crazy, and I need a week’s grace before getting out the grinder again. But don’t worry. You won’t need this much, as I make six large loaves a week for my big family. I’m only giving you a two or four-loaf version, and you don’t have to make it every week. You can freeze leftovers and then only bake when you want to again.

If I had to grind every week, I would have given up sourdough bread-making years ago! Even though you won’t be grinding as much flour as I do, I still strongly suggest doing your grinding in bulk if you want to bake more than once a month. Peasant Bread doesn’t take much work or time on your part… fermentation is the only lengthy amount of time required, but that has nothing to do with you. But the grinding… it can be a bread-making deterrent. Bulk grinding takes it off your schedule for a full month plus.

I just take one afternoon like a Sunday, put my favorite podcast in my earphones, and just grind away. I understand that freshly ground flour, ground on the day of bread making, may possess a few more bioavailable nutrients. But as I said… I don’t love frequent grinding! So, I get better health payoffs by grinding in bulk rather than fresh each time, which helps me stick to it. I reassure myself with this—the fermentation process takes the flour and amps the vitamins back up again, to super levels! And in my mind, using up my flour within just a couple/few weeks versus buying flour that has sat for months, if not years, on the shelf is still far superior. Bulk grinding is not a lot of work either, just a bit of watching and refilling the grinder. You’ll use a separate bucket to prep each batch of bread. It makes bread-making streamlined by having all the right dry measured ingredients in the bucket stored and ready for bread-making day.

Can you tell me more about these buckets?

I can tell you that you don’t have to use them. If you have large bowls with lids that stack well, then more power to you. You can use those… but you won’t be able to tell people you make sourdough bread in buckets at parties! And in my experience, buckets just work better. My bread has been given a lot of names by my children. They’ve called it Brick Bread (it resembles bricks but thankfully doesn’t taste like them), and they’ve called it Bucket Bread. That’s because I use buckets to store the ground flour, mix the bread, soak the bread, and also to make the Cracked Rye Starter. So my children see a lot of buckets when I’m bread making. I use five 5-gallon buckets for my five large batches of bread for a month to five weeks, but unless your family is as large as mine, I suggest two 2-gallon buckets for you. One to store your ground flour and salt for your bread batch (which will have its soak inside the bucket), and one to make the Cracked Rye Starter in (you’ll learn about that soon). The 2-gallon size will still give you plenty of room to get your hands in and mix your two or 4-loaf batch super well when the time comes, even when combined with the Cracked Rye Starter before you put it all in pans for the final ferment. To be clear, whether you’re making the two-loaf or the four-loaf option, a 2-gallon bucket will be big enough for you.

Look at the ingredient amounts in the recipe for Peasant Bread. I begin grinding the cracked rye grain for the bread first, then measure it out into my buckets. Then I grind more to feed the Cracked Rye Starter that leavens the bread. I grind enough extra cracked grain to fill four gallon-sized zippies, which I keep in my fridge. This means that when I feed the starter, all the grinding work is already done for it. You’ll probably only need 1-2 gallon-sized zippies for your smaller bread batch. After I grind the rye, I then grind and measure out the cracked spelt flour into buckets. I make sure to put the salt into each bucket, too! Salt-free bread is gross! If I don’t measure it with the grain and prep it in the buckets, I often forget it in the next soaking step. I stack and store my flour-filled buckets on top of one another in a corner of my pantry with the peace of mind that I have trimming, healing bread all tucked away for the month.

You’ll also want to keep a small amount of fine pre-ground whole rye flour in a smaller zippy bag to be used for your initial sleeper starter feeding and to keep Sleeping Sue alive and happy now and then when she has been sleeping for a while and needs another feed. More about your sleeper starter soon. I also keep fine pre-ground spelt in my fridge for my Fermented Flatbread (Flatties) and my Shabbat Bread needs. So yup, since I make several versions of sourdough baked goods, I do always have quite a few flour bags in my fridge, but it saves me having to grind first for baking sessions, and that works much better for my life.

Where can I find the right kind of buckets?

I purchased my food-grade, BPA-free, 5-gallon buckets from Lowe’s. Perhaps you can find them elsewhere if you don’t have a Lowe’s. You can find smaller versions (2 gallons) at Lowe’s as well, and they’re also food-grade, which you want.

SECTION 2: SLEEPING SUE

Meet Sleeping Sue.

• 1 rounded teaspoon of any true Sourdough Starter
• ½ cup fine-milled whole grain rye flour (not the cracked kind used for Peasant Bread)
• ⅓ cup room temp (baby bath temp), pure water

1. Place one rounded teaspoon of sourdough starter into a sterilized pint-sized jar
2. Feed it the fine-milled, not cracked, rye flour and the water, then stir; you’ll have a mashed potato kind of consistency.
3. Loosely place a lid on it (any kind of lid) and then let it sit at room temp for around four hours to activate and get the microbes leavening.
4. Once she’s feisty and happy around the 4-hour mark, place Sleeping Sue at the back of the fridge until you pull her out for your next bread-making session. (be sure to keep her lid very loosely screwed on . . . even in the fridge . . . not tight!)

Activate Sleeping Sue and make Cracked Rye Starter:

Two days before bread-baking day, take Sleeping Sue out of the fridge and activate her to make Cracked Rye Starter using the feeding portions listed below.

Why do I need a sleeping starter?

Sleeping Sue is your foundation for any sourdough bread making. She seeds all your future starters. You can’t get a bread rise without her.

Sue is just a small starter and spends most of her time sleeping in the fridge. She only comes out when you want to activate her to create another kind of larger starter or levain. Thankfully, she’s easy to make and easy to look after. In this case, for Peasant Bread, you’ll be turning her into a Cracked Rye Starter. But you can’t make that without first making her. My other recipe, Fermented Flatbread, uses her to make a spelt starter, and my Shabbat Bread uses her to make a levain. As you can see, she’s all sorts of flexible.

If you’re a sourdough baker already, you probably have your own version of a Sleeping Sue. Perhaps you just haven’t named her yet. But I’m guessing yours is probably not made from whole rye like Sue is, so not to be too judgmental, nah… I’ll be judgmental… yours is probably not as blood sugar friendly, and that’s not doing you as many favors if you’re in a challenging pause season. Just being real because I want to give you the healthiest bread! If you’re in a challenging hormonal season, it means you likely have some form of insulin resistance and muscle wasting going on. Our big Wisdom book teaches you how to turn that around, but using a regular, refined flour starter for your sourdough doesn’t help the situation. Sure, it is better than eating regular bread that hasn’t been fermented, but it is not as kind to your blood sugar as a whole rye starter. You might also want to know that the bran in whole grains keeps sourdough starters happier… especially rye! Starters love whole, ancient grains… particularly rye, and at the end of this course, I give you seven reasons to use rye as your starter. After reading that, you can convert your own sleeping starter to whole rye, or you can ignore me and keep it as is if you prefer, and I’ll still be your friend.

What does it mean to “activate her?”

It means to feed her so her leavening biotics wake up and start preparing for action. If you ever make my Shabbat Bread, you’ll notice that Sue needs a higher activation in that recipe. She requires four feedings over two days. Here in Peasant Bread, she just needs one feeding. That’ll take about four hours to fatten her up, then she’ll be good and ready to make her transformation into a Cracked Rye Starter.

Why are you calling this starter a “her?”

Well, your sleeping starter is your real and living sourdough pet. I’m not exactly sure why she’s a she in my mind. But she’s great at changing into whatever you need her to be. The older she gets, the more wonderful and robust her flavor characteristics are—isn’t that like a woman? And the older she gets, the more skillfully she performs . . . um . . . for your baking, I mean. (I’ll refrain from making a joke about, you know what, after almost 30 years of marriage, but that’s kinda true, too.)

Sleeping Sue is the only starter you need (or whatever you call your pet—and it deserves an honorable name, so feel free to borrow mine if you don’t have your own). Well… there is one scenario where you may want another sleeper starter—that would be if you have a gluten-free family member and you want to keep a completely separate gluten-free sourdough sleeper starter around. You actually can convert a regular grain starter into a gluten-free one, but it takes about a week and complicates things a bit if you want to keep going back and forth between making typical grain sourdough and gluten-free sourdough.

Why must I get her out two days before baking?

When it comes to activating Sue, you’ll learn to think ahead. Sourdough bread baking is always made on a cycle, not a whim. It always takes some pre-thought. Let’s say you decide to bake Peasant Bread sometime on Wednesday morning… that means you’ll need to get Sleeping Sue out of the fridge on Monday morning and start activating her into becoming your Cracked Rye Starter (which you’ll learn to do in the next section).

How do I sterilize Sleeping Sue’s jar?

Sterilize a pint jar by pouring boiling water into it (with a metal utensil inside to prevent cracking). Once cooled, add your starter, rye flour, and water in the measurements listed in the recipe to create that mashed-potato texture. Keep her lid loose so gases can escape while she’s fermenting.

Why does Sue get fed fine-milled rye flour?

Sleeping Sue must always eat fine-milled rye flour for her first meal after sleep or when you first receive her from purchasing online (or perhaps you are gifted a sleeping starter from a friend). Fine-milled rye is broken down more quickly into fast fuel for her leavening healthy biotics to wake up and get into action. Overall, Peasant Bread uses cracked flour (larger sized), and it even uses cracked Grain in the feisty starter, but beginning with cracked flour won’t work for Sue. It doesn’t offer fast enough action, and she won’t gain enough growth.

You’ll learn soon that when you make your Cracked Rye Starter, even its first feeding must be fine rye flour. After that, it will get two cracked rye feedings. Just a little blood sugar lesson here—sourdough bugs love fine flour because it is more instant and available. Think about that: cracked flour is a slower fuel for bugs just as it is a slower fuel for your blood sugar… and that’s what you want for your blood sugar… healthy carbs, but a nice slow rise of them! Just another reason to love Peasant Bread! Perfectly suited for a slow, safe rise for your blood sugar.

What if I just purchased an online starter?

If you’ve just received your online-purchased starter in the mail, you need to give Sue her first feed as soon as possible. If you’re not ready to start your Peasant Bread baking cycle just yet, put one rounded teaspoon of the starter in a sterilized jar. At this point, I think of her as Tiny Sleeping Sue. She’s awfully little, so you must feed her the rye flour and water, put her on the counter to digest it for four hours, and then she’ll be her regular size, and she’ll go into her sleeping home in the fridge. Only take her out when you’re ready to start your Peasant Bread baking cycle. Or instead of Peasant Bread, perhaps you’ll want to make another bread with her instead, like my Flatties or Shabbat Bread.

If you are anxious to get started making Peasant Bread straight away, though, you can. Usually, purchased starters from online vendors come to you as about two tablespoons’ worth. So, you can divide your new starter up. Put the rounded teaspoon of starter into Sue’s new home jar. She’s in Tiny Sleeping Sue form at this point, so feed her and put her on the counter to chow down as just described. While she’s digesting her favorite food, get started on your Cracked Rye Starter. Put the rest of your purchased starter into a bucket (explained in the next section) or bowl, feed according to directions in Cracked Rye Starter, and get that going at the same time. Just remember to put Sleeping Sue back in the fridge once she’s had her four-hour feed, so she’ll be ready for you next time you need her. The Cracked Rye Starter will stay out to get more feedings and ferment a lot longer.

In all future Peasant Bread-making sessions, you’ll pull Sue out of the fridge and put all but one rounded teaspoon of her into a bowl. Don’t wash her jar! She loves her jar with all its cute, messy scrapings on the side. Those are the decorations for her home that make her flourish! You’ll feed Tiny Sleeping Sue as per usual and let her eat that for four hours while at the same time using the rest of her to make your Cracked Rye Starter and begin your Peasant Bread baking cycle. Just never forget to put Sue back in the fridge after she’s had her feed. Leave the Cracked Rye Starter out . . . it has work to do!

Will Sleeping Sue look a certain way after she’s been fed?

Yes, she should rise substantially within the jar after four hours of digesting her meal on your counter. She should get a wonderful honeycomb look that you can see through the sides of her jar. That’s her sign of health! If she gets upset and sickly… perhaps she caught a bad microbe somehow… she will start to look flat and act lifeless… breathless, to be more specific… meaning no movement of air rising within her. But that’s not super common, so don’t worry about it at this point.

What should Sleeping Sue smell like in her different stages?

When she is healthy and after she’s been sleeping in the fridge for a while, say a week or two, she should smell pleasantly sour and have a yeasty aroma that can be thought of as a mild beery smell. Some of the starters you make with her might smell stronger as they have longer ferment times. Sourdough starters have a smell; just get used to it. Don’t freak out when they smell… cuz they will! In our modern kitchens, often filled with pre-packaged food, many of us modern folk have lost the scent of what real food smells like . . . or the ingredients that make that real food. Real kitchens smell . . . not rotten . . . but not sterile like surgical hospitals, so don’t overanalyze a starter’s natural B.O! Hehe!

The only time Sleeping Sue’s smell will barely be detected is when you first make her… or right after she’s eaten a meal. She stops letting off so much B.O. after she’s feeling fat and happy. We’ll talk later in the course about leaving her too long in the fridge without feedings… this stresses her out, and when this happens, she gets really desperate for a feed and starts smelling like a whole brewery… she gets really yeasty and rank!! Don’t worry… if it has not been more than about three weeks without a meal, you probably haven’t starved her to death… just give her a meal. Discard most of the smelly stuff. Just leave that rounded one teaspoon in the jar. She’ll start chilling out and stop stinking so much after a ½ cup fine rye and a ⅓ cup tepid water… her favorite food… she’ll be all sweet and mild again. If she starts smelling truly rotten, though, she might have gotten contaminated with something not so healthy… this is usually because she has been neglected far too long; her good bugs were completely starved, leaving an environment for other snarly hosts to take over. Or some other bug got into her. Only at that point will you have to chuck her and start again.

Note:

In the final section (Section 7 of this FAQ course), I will provide more answers to any more niggling questions you may have about Sleeping Sue . . . like whether you should ever clean her jar if things get really bad or what to do if you leave her alone too long in the fridge without feeding her. Or, can you make a backup in case she… dare I say it… she dies???? But for now… you need to make Peasant Bread in short order, so let’s get to learning how to create your first Cracked Rye Starter.

SECTION 3—CRACKED RYE STARTER

Now that you have your Sleeping Sue deets all covered, Cracked Rye Starter is the next step for Peasant Bread. Let’s take a look, and then your questions will be asked and answered . . .

Cracked Rye Starter: Ingredients & Three Feedings

Base—Sleeping Sue minus one rounded teaspoon (or if this is your first time and you purchased a store-bought starter, use leftover contents of the starter after using the one rounded teaspoon to make your Sleeping Sue)

FIRST FEEDING:

• 1 cup fine-milled whole-grain rye flour 1 cup room-temperature pure water

Feed to activate: Place Sleeping Sue (minus the rounded teaspoon that goes back in the jar) into a bowl to become a Cracked Rye Starter. Give the first feeding of fine rye flour and water, then stir well to obtain an oatmeal-type consistency. Place a lid on the bucket or bowl and leave to ferment for 12 hours on the counter.

SECOND FEEDING:

• 1½ cups cracked rye flour
• 1½ cups room-temperature pure water

Feed it cracked grain and water for the second feeding. Stir well. Place the lid on again and let ferment for another 12 hours.

THIRD FEEDING:

• 4 cups cracked rye flour
• 4 cups room-temperature pure water

Give it a third and final feeding with the allotted cracked grain and water, stir, and then let it have its final 12-hour ferment (try to loosely coincide this with your 12-hour cracked bread soak; described in Section 3. If your last starter ferment takes a bit longer, that’s fine.

I see “buckets” again… Can you explain further?

In the intro, I shared how I use buckets for grinding and storing the flours. I also use them for the Cracked Rye Starter. Of course, you don’t have to use a bucket. A bowl will be fine. Or you can use a pot or container (plastic, ceramic, or stainless steel… doesn’t matter). Just make sure it is large enough for the end goal amount of your Cracked Rye Starter ingredients, plus room for expansion from fermentation. An old crockpot works if you still have the lid. You need a fitting lid to keep winged or crawling bugs out.

What time of day is best to start Cracked Rye Starter?

For me, it works best to start in the morning, which means two mornings later, I’ll be baking Peasant Bread after its final in-pan ferment. However, my life is crazy, so my best plans have been waylaid plenty of times, and I’ve baked the bread at all kinds of ridiculous times of the day or night. If you’re just starting out, you’ll feel more at peace, giving yourself the morning to bake (as the bake time is three hours), so if you work outside of the home, you’ll probably want to do it on one of your off days the first time. Or ignore that recommendation, do the math, and figure out another bake time that will work for you… maybe an early evening bake time will end up the perfect slot for you.

Even if you work outside of the home, your Cracked Rye Starter can be doing its final overnight ferment in its covered bucket or bowl. Then, after it has been mixed with the soaked bread ingredients, it can be doing its in-pan ferment while you’re gone. You can time your return to get it in the oven after it has had its eight hours in the bread pans. Whichever time of day you decide to bake your bread, just always remember that this whole Peasant Bread baking process will take about two days once you take Sleeping Sue out and start activating her to begin your Cracked Rye Starter.

How long does Cracked Rye Starter take to be ready?

It will be ready to use for baking after its three easy feedings. All three feedings need 12 hours to chomp up the food, so the total time for Cracked Rye Starter activation is 36 hours. (During its last 12-hour feeding, your bread ingredients will also be having their 12-hour soak.) You’ll mix your finished, feisty starter into the bucket (or bowl) with the soaked bread ingredients, and everything will have a final 8-hour ferment in the pans. That’s why I mentioned earlier… and will keep repeating it… think two days ahead for Peasant Bread making; 36 hours for the starter, then a full eight hours for the final ferment in the bread tins… add the two together, and you realize this is why two days are required… (well, at 46 hours, you’re short by a couple, but this doesn’t matter.) Don’t worry, though… time is the only main thing required… all you’ll be doing is feeding your starter a few times and getting your hands in a bucket a time or two.

I’m confused about choosing between the two or four-loaf options.

Your Cracked Rye Starter needs three feeds to get it strong enough to give the dense, cracked rye grain a rise (remember, the first feed is fine flour, the second two use cracked flour). To become that strong, it must also get larger, and the end result makes more than what you’ll need to just make two loaves of bread. You don’t want to waste this precious stuff, so my suggestion is to opt for the two-loaf option and then make Peasant Protein Muffins with the Cracked Rye Starter leftovers the first time you make this bread. You can make the muffins directly after the bread is cooked (or at the same time if you have the oven space) or put the Cracked Rye Starter in the fridge and make Peasant Protein Muffins when you feel ready… later in your week, perhaps. Cracked Rye Starter will be ready to go right out of the fridge for Peasant Protein Muffins; no need to feed it again, as we’re not relying on it for the rise of those muffins. If you love the result of your Peasant Bread and think you will use the bread more than you will the muffins, then make the four loaves next time. But both kinds… muffins and bread freeze well. Or you can do as Pearl suggests at the bottom of the skeleton Cracked Rye Starter recipe (on page xxx) and make her Lazy Flatties out of it. I don’t put my seal of approval on that, though. “Inferior!” I say with my nose in the air!

SECTION 4—BREAD SOAK

Let’s look at the direction step for soaking the bread ingredients from the Peasant Bread recipe, then answer questions about it…

Soak the Bread Ingredients:

Once your Cracked Rye Starter is ready for its third and final feed, it is also time for the bread soak (they happen at the same time). Decide whether you’ll be making either two or four loaves of Peasant Bread and place the appropriate amounts of cracked bread grain in a bucket or large bowl with the Mineral Salt. Add the room-temperature water to the bucket. Mix really well with your hands until all the grain is moistened and there are no pockets of dried, cracked grain. Once mixed, place the lid on the bucket and let it soak for 12 hours while your Cracked Grain Starter ferments its final feeding.

What is the reason for soaking the bread grain?

There are two main reasons for soaking. The main one is the soak softens the cracked grain. If you used cracked grain and didn’t soak, you might crack your teeth! But soaking delivers other health benefits, so even if you’re not planning on using cracked grain for your Peasant Bread, I still recommend it. The 12-hour soak activates the enzyme phytase, which breaks down phytic acid (phytic acid inhibits the absorption of calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, and zinc). It increases the vitamin and mineral content and makes them more readily available to your body. It also provides lactic acid for insulin sensitivity and lactobacilli, which boost immune health.

Can I have more details on the soaking process?

Take out one of your pre-prepped buckets with its already measured flour and salt for either the two or four-loaf option. Pour in the amount of water that matches your loaf amount listed in the Peasant Bread recipe. Or if you haven’t pre-prepped in buckets, do as the directions step indicates and put the ingredients for either the two or four-loaf batch of bread in a large bowl and add the water. Now, get your hands all in there! It’s the absolute best way to mix it all up. If you don’t love that idea, you can use gloves (get ones that go up to your elbows)… or sure… use a large wooden spoon or something. Honestly, I don’t really know what utensil to suggest here because I’ve always used my hands. Don’t forget to put the lid back on the bucket or bowl after you’ve mixed, and be sure to let the soak happen at room temperature . . . don’t do the soak in the fridge!! Room temperature is required for success; the salt in the grain protects it from spoilage.

For me, this process is so easy. Just mixy mixy, then cover and leave. As I’ve mentioned multiple times, though, this soak is best paired up with your Cracked Rye Starter’s final feeding and ferment, which also takes 12 hours. I don’t want you to forget that timing.

SECTION 5—IN-PAN FERMENT

Now, for the final stage of Peasant Bread making, the two separate bread components come together. Let’s have another look at the direction step for this in the Peasant Bread recipe, then ask and answer any questions you may have…

In-Pan Ferment:

After the soak time, add the Cracked Rye Starter to the soaked bread bucket and mix really well with your hands again. Spray or oil bread tins with coconut or olive oil. Divide the soaked dough into bread tins. Leave on the counter to ferment for around eight hours at room temp… longer if your house is cold. If needed, cover tins with a cookie sheet, cutting board, or any flat thing that covers them so flying things don’t get in.

So, the contents of one bucket get transferred into the other?

Yup, if you’re using buckets, scrape out the contents of the Cracked Rye Starter and add it to the bucket with the soaked bread. If not using buckets, just combine both in the largest of the bowls you used for either the soak or the final Cracked Rye Starter feeding. Once they’re in the same bucket or bowl, I just shove my hands in there and punch and squish and stir with all my fingers springing into action. Once again, I find that hands do the best job of making the dough perfectly combined. You are not kneading here, just combining well. The mixture should look like thick, mushy Scottish porridge… peasant porridge, to be exact! It is not meant to look like regular bread dough. The rye makes it too sticky and wet to knead or fold and pull. The mushiness is perfect.

What sort of bread pans do you suggest I use?

The bread tins I love and suggest are NSF 72060 Stainless Steel Vollrath. These are expensive, yes, but you can’t wreck them. They make a perfect, large-sized bread loaf, not an insipid loaf that doesn’t slice up nicely for sandwiches. The size is 10⅜ by 5½ inches, and it holds three quarts. I bought six of them and don’t regret the purchase one tiny bit. They stack nicely together and don’t rust when not in use. You don’t need to use my suggested kind, though. I have used other kinds with success. If you use smaller pans, take into account bake time. It will be less. I find that tins work better than glass… but ceramic or crock material works lovely, too. Don’t use non-stick tins, as the sourdough will eat the coating off, and then you’ll consume it yourself… ugh!!

How do I get the mush into the pans?

Once again—your hands! A great hack is to get your bare hands (or gloved hands) a bit wet first, so the mush will not be so sticky to let go of as you help scrape it into the pans. After the bread is divided into two or four pans, it won’t look perfect, but you don’t want the top of your bread to look like ugly boogers either; you want it flat and lovely. So, moisten your hands again with water and flatten the top of the bread by patting it with your wet hands… slap, slap, slap on the top.

Can I have more deets on the fermentation time?

Now that your bread is in the pan, it’s time for the final ferment before you bake. Although the recipe says “eight hours,” it does not have to be exactly eight hours. You can go a little longer if you want… let’s say you didn’t wake up in time to put the bread in the oven at exactly eight hours, and it has been nine hours since you filled the bread pans last night and left them to ferment. Your bread should be okay. Or if you have a cold house in winter, perhaps your bread will need another hour. Just remember that too much overfermentation will collapse your bread and give you no oven spring, but you have about an hour’s grace on either side of the eight-hour mark. Seven hours can be enough time in a warm house, but no less. Eight hours in a regular temp house is about perfect. My life is here, there, and everywhere kind of busy, so often I have left my pans fermenting for ten hours or so… yes, that caused a bit of a dip in my bread… it didn’t rise quite as beautifully, but I don’t sweat that… this is Peasant Bread, after all, and it is very forgiving. We are not handing out prizes for the most beautiful loaf, remember… the prize is the taste and the blessing to your gut and waistline.

SECTION 6—THE BAKE

Let’s look at the direction step for the bake from the Peasant Bread recipe . . .

Bake:

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place a Pyrex dish filled with water on the bottom rack to provide continual steam to the bread while baking. Put loaves on the middle rack and bake for three hours.

Remove the loaves from the oven but keep them in the tins. Use a moistened, clean, wrung-out dish towel and lay it over the top of the bread. Cover the bread in the tins for three hours before removing it.

Three hours… are you kidding?

This length of bake sounds super crazy long, doesn’t it? Well, you put mush in the pans for a reason. Rye bread needs to stay moist, or it gets as hard as bricks when cooked. Peasant Bread has a super-wet dough to ensure you end up with a moist interior. This means it needs a full three hours in my oven to set up right, but I think my oven runs a little cooler than most. Maybe 2½ hours will be perfect for you… but if you find it too moist after a day post-baking… then extend it to the 3-hour mark next time. Toast your first round of little too-moist bread up. It’ll be fine.

Why use a dish of water on the oven rack?

Steaming is an important part of getting the right texture for Peasant Bread. Using a Pyrex dish of water under your bread steams the dough, giving it an incredible malty and chewy texture.

And now wait another three hours after it comes out of the oven???!!!

Yup. It is rye bread. It needs time to set up properly, or it might be too moist inside. Although super yummy right now, the bread will not be easily sliced. You can rip it and melt butter on it… but it will be a little gummy inside. True rye bread of a high percentage needs a good part of the day to set firmly inside. At my house, we usually can’t wait, though. Since we make six loaves at a time, we usually sacrifice one loaf to rip open in chunks and eat immediately. But we are a house of ruffians.

After a few hours of cooling with the moistened, wrung-out dish towel lying over the top of the tins, you are officially ready to remove Peasant Bread from its tins. Using a butter knife, carefully release the bread from the tins by sliding the knife between the bread and the tin on all sides. Now, turn the tin upside down and hit it on a cutting board to help it come out with a quick thump.

SECTION 7—REMAINING NIGGLING CONCERNS & QUESTIONS

Gah . . . there’s so much to learn???!!!

Time for a “cheerlead” in the mental game of sourdough feeding and converting. Don’t get put off by all the steps I’ve outlined here in this FAQ course. While at first, it does seem involved and may feel complicated on the first read or first one or two baking go-arounds, all these steps become second nature after a while. Most of the steps only take the time it takes to brush your teeth, so they are not time-consuming or exhausting. Soon they will be programmed into your brain and can be done on the fly as you are rushing in or out the door. If I can do it, so can you!

What if I haven’t baked bread for a while? Can Sleeping Sue sleep too long?

There are times when life gets too busy for even the simplicity of Peasant Bread. Sleeping Sue can sleep forever as long as you give her a little boost meal twice a month. Every two weeks or so, take her out of her fridge and remove all but one rounded teaspoon of her contents. The part you will remove is called discard. You can either toss it (but most sourdough lovers hate to do that) or put it in another jar and use it for other things. There are many online recipe ideas for discard (suggested culturedfoodlife.com), but I usually just add it to my Fermented Flatbread mixture. Feed Tiny Sue with ½ cup of fine whole grain rye flour and ⅓ cup of water for that mashed potato consistency after stirring. Put her lid back on loosely and leave her to activate on the counter for four hours, then place her back to sleep in the fridge. She’ll be fat and happy for another couple of weeks or so. But hey, if you can’t be bothered feeding her every two weeks, just dry preserve her as I’ll soon suggest, and be done with her until you are ready again.

In all honesty, though, you can probably extend this fridge comatose of Sleeping Sue for a full month without a feed if life gets crazy. I have done this a time or two before. It’s not exactly meant to be done, but I’m a rule-breaker, and things have still worked out. If you’re a bad pet owner like me and leave her too long now and then, you might need to scrape her top layer off. It can start to look a little funky when you finally pull her out of the fridge and wake her up for baking. She’ll still probably be lovely and healthy under this layer if she’s anything like my Sue. But if she stinks and you can’t find a healthy layer to her even deeper underneath… then chuck her! She died! Moment of silence…

There is a way to avoid her complete death, though… you put a portion of her away in dehydrated form… in case of such a sad occasion. I am about to tell you how to reserve one or more dehydrated portions of Sleeping Sue for these desperate times and for when you are going out of town for more than a month or when you want to take more than a month-long break from baking. Dehydrating a part of her will ensure you don’t have to go and buy another starter and start again from scratch. (If you do, though… no shame.)

How to dry-preserve Sleeping Sue?

Sleeping Sue can go into a long-term coma state by dehydrating her. This is useful if you’re going away and won’t be around to be a pet owner for a few weeks, or if you’re going into a “too busy to do any sourdough season.” The other reason you may want to dehydrate her is not because you want to stop being a pet owner, but because you want a backup version if something happens to your current Sleeping Sue (perhaps she gets accidentally thrown out by a family member cleaning out your fridge, thinking she is old food). Some of you may think dehydrating her as a backup plan is worth the effort over purchasing another starter if she passes away. Others of you won’t sweat the money and just buy another one if the unthinkable happens to Sue. (P—I’m reading through this course and editing Serene as I go… while she’s almost convinced me to make her bread, there is no way I would go to all that work of dehydrating a backup starter… but hey… they don’t call me Drive Thru Sue for nothin’.)

You’ll dehydrate Sue when she’s at her healthiest. Take her out and give her favorite meal… well, her only meal, but it’s still her favorite. Once she’s gotten fat and happy again after sitting on the counter eating that for four hours, you should start to see the honeycomb appearance on the side of the jar… little happy air bubbles. (Don’t get too “rulesy” over this time… it might take more than four hours for this, just don’t go below four hours). Scrape her out and smear her as thinly as possible onto parchment paper, laying over a cookie sheet, or directly onto a silicone mat.

Leave her to dehydrate in room air with a household fan on low, blowing over her. The fan also keeps winged creatures from landing on her and making themselves feel at home. If you are extra worried, then you can place a pop-up fly netting over the top. It takes, on average, 24 hours to get her nice and dry… depending upon the humidity level of your home. It may take a lot longer in humid environments… up to a few days. If you have a dehydrator, then you have a perfect setup. The only issue is that you need to keep it under 105°F to keep the leavening microbes alive, and this is why an oven will not work, as its temperatures do not stay low enough. Freeze-dryers are also a wonderful way to dry your starter if you happen to have one.

When she is FULLY dry, you’ll know when this happens as she will snap and not stay bendy. Break her up and put her in a zippy or a glass jar. Just make sure whatever container you use is airtight. Some folks like to “wizz” their dehydrated Sue’s into a powder in a clean coffee and spice grinder, but I can’t be bothered with all that.

Store her in an airtight container in a dark, dry cupboard that is not near any heat source. She’s now ready for a long-term coma state. If you’re not going away but dehydrating her as a backup plan (life insurance against accident or death), and you want to keep your current Sleeping Sue going, just remember to leave that one rounded teaspoon of Sue in the jar after you’ve scraped out the rest of her to dehydrate. And you’ll have fed her again before you put her back in the fridge.

How to rehydrate Sleeping Sue?

It is a four-day process waking Sue up from her dehydrated coma, but don’t get freaked out; it is hardly any work for you.

Day 1:

Place one rounded teaspoon of dehydrated Sleeping Sue back into a sterilized but cooled pint jar (her original home). You might have to crush it with the back of a spoon before measuring it as a rounded teaspoon, so it is close to accurate.

Add one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of pure room-temperature water into the jar and let her rehydrate for a couple of hours.

Now add one tablespoon fine (not cracked) rye flour plus one tablespoon pure tepid water. Stir well and leave Sue out on the counter with her loose-fitting lid. Also, you could use a self-fulfilling prophecy over her and change her name for a few days, so she gets the message to WAKE UP! Perhaps you could call her “Spirited Sue” or “Sprightly Sue.” She might need that positive energy while coming out of her coma… hehe. She also needs warmth… not too much, but she won’t want to wake up in a too-cold house. If your house is cold, then you might have to get extra maternal. Wrap her in a blanket like a precious baby, and if need be, put her closer to a heat source like a little heater. My home is big and drafty, so in the winter, I often must wrap Sleeping Sue up, even if she’s not coming out of a coma… just to get her warm and happy during a feeding. I take her to my bedroom in a cozy, warmer corner. Some sourdough pet owners use their oven with just a pilot light on as a warm place. And just as a rabbit trail… the pioneers who traversed out west on the wagon trains often wore their sourdough starter in a leather satchel around their necks and under their clothes against their skin to keep it warm and well in the harsh winters.

Day 2:

Once again, add just one tablespoon of fine rye flour and one tablespoon of room-temperature water today. Stir, loosely place on lid. Put her back on the counter in a warm area of your house.

Day 3:

Same as day 2. Add one tablespoon of fine rye flour and the same amount of pure, room-temperature (baby bath temp) water.

Day 4:

Today, if you see some form of bubbles starting to show action on the sides of the jar when you check on her, then she’s livening up! You can now discard all but one rounded teaspoon of her (and, of course, keep all those lovely dregs along the side of the jar) and feed her the original Sleeping Sue meal of ½ cup of fine rye flour and ⅓ cup of pure tepid water. You can then put her back in the fridge and treat her normally (take her out when you need her), or if you wait another four hours… yeah, leave her out for another 4, you can go straight to using her to make Cracked Rye Starter and begin your bread making process which will go into the oven in 2 days’ time.

If you saw no bubble action today, then don’t discard it. Repeat the process of adding one tablespoon more fine rye flour and one tablespoon of tepid pure water without discarding till the day five mark.

Besides starving Sleeping Sue, are there any other things I should know about how to keep her from dying?

Since we’re on the subject of Sue’s potential demise… and how to avoid that or at least have a backup plan for if it happens, I’ll warn you about other things that are mortal strikes. Chlorinated water will kill her! Excessive heat will kill her. She likes to live at a comfy room temp. Cold won’t kill her, but it will put her to sleep, and she won’t leaven at too cold temperatures. Oh… and it is a myth that stainless steel pots or utensils will harm her. I stir my Sleeping Sue with a regular kitchen soup spoon or fork and often make a big levain from her for my Shabbat Bread in a stainless-steel pot. She’ll corrode lesser metals like aluminum or metals high in nickel, though, and they are also not a healthy choice for her most active life.

Do I ever need to clean Sleeping Sue’s jar?

If you begin with a sterilized jar and only use clean utensils when handling your starter, you only have to clean the jar every 2–3 months or so. Just remember to put her back in a sterilized jar.

Can I use other types of flour for Sleeping Sue? Why so fixed on rye, Serene?

We’ve covered this elsewhere in this course, but let’s give it some more airtime. To answer the question… yes, you can. Most sourdough starters are fed unbleached white wheat flour. Rye is obviously not the only way to feed a successful starter in the sourdough world. I choose to use it for many very wonderful reasons that may sway you to use it also.

7 Reasons to Use Whole Rye:

• Fantastic Fermenting: Rye loves to ferment. It rushes into fermentation. It was born for the job with its hydrophilic nature, which draws water into itself. Wholegrain rye flour is a superfood for sourdough. It has extremely charged enzymatic activity that really revs up the fermentation process. This faster metabolism of rye flour provides a more robust multiplication of wild yeast and lactobacilli bacteria. For this reason, a “little pep of rye flour thrown in” is known as a medicine for lagging and sickly regular flour sourdough starter.
• Ancient, Whole Grain Merits: Rye is not only one of the slowest-burning whole grains, but it is also one of the ancients. Many people only think of grains like Kamut, spelt, and einkorn as the ancient ones, but rye is one of them, too. The studies on rye’s gut-boosting abilities are immense, and it also helps release incretin hormones to lower insulin resistance and slash food noise, but we won’t go into that here as we did in the big Wisdom book. I don’t use stripped (refined) flour in any part of my bread-making, and despite the trend to do so, neither do you. The bread that I love to live on and the one I use to help my family’s health thrive must be incredibly blood sugar friendly, and I don’t leave any window open to spike blood sugar levels like using even small portions of stripped flour.
• Soluble Fiber: One of the ways in which rye protects against too high blood sugar is its soluble fiber. It forms a gel-like texture in your stomach. This satiating formation of soluble gel not only slays elevated blood sugar like a boss, but it keeps you full for longer.
• Moisture Galore: Rye’s ability to hold moisture is a fourth reason why I use it in my starter. I love the leaven portion of my bread to provide moistness to whatever other whole grain I choose to use in my bread. I make spelt bread boules for our weekend bread (what I call Shabbat Bread), and when the leaven portion is made of rye, the bread stays far moister and fresher for much longer than when I use 100% spelt, even in the leaven! It’s quite an amazing experiment to test the freshness length if you’re as nerdy as I am about all this.
• It’s Cheaper! Some of you might put this at number ONE! My fifth reason is that rye is far less expensive than most other organic ancient grains, and that factors in for something as staple as bread, which is the backbone of my large family’s diet.
• Less Hooch: After playing with starters for many years, I find that rye gives me less hooch (the darker-colored liquid that forms on top of your starter when it is put to sleep or left a little too long without food). It seems to be far more resilient!
• Feisty Fermentation: I love the special talent rye flour has for feisty fermentation. It gives sourdough the perfect environment to bring out the richest and most complex sourdough flavors. It also provides a special tang unlike any other flour.

So, that was a super long answer to the question of why I use rye, but yes, you can choose another flour for feeding. You can change your starter to other flours whenever you so desire, as well. You can purchase a starter made from any flour and very soon change it to another when you get it home and start feeding it yourself. If your friend gives you a starter, don’t be concerned about what type of flour it comes from. You can change a regular white wheat starter to fully wholegrain rye, a rye starter to fully spelt, or a spelt starter to a 100% einkorn flour starter. So don’t worry about having to purchase a rye starter or any particular variety to begin with. All that matters is that it is super active and happy, and if you got it from a friend, that it made wonderful bread for her… or him!