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Sourdough bread: homemade
Photo: Elena Cremer
If I miss something abroad, it's sourdough bread, juicy, fresh with a cracking crust.
Bread is not only typically German: it is one of the most important foods in the world.
A long time ago people only ate their cereal cakes warm; when they got cold, they were hard and inedible.
But: If the dough remained standing longer, it fermented and the dough loosened.
Even in the ancient Orient, people were familiar with sourdough bread made in this way, some ate it, some Egyptians also paid with it, historians assume today.
In Germany, bread was the most important food in the early modern period, around 1500 to 1800.
Half of the cost of living was spent on bread at the time; anyone who had no bread was considered poor.
In Germany, every single person today consumes an average of 60 kilos of bread a year and pays almost 150 euros for it.
Many like to knead and stir themselves, not a few celebrate their art of baking and show the most beautiful sourdough breads on Instagram: #sourdough.
At some point I wanted to bake bread like this myself, the sourdough approach challenged my patience: feed and wait for at least seven days - but it's worth it.
(I explain the individual steps here.)
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