Beginner's healthy bread

I am a total beginner when it comes to baking. My idea of baking prior to actually doing it was that it will take a lot of effort and one mistake could ruin the bread altogether. Well, guess what? I was right! Still, I realized I was worrying too much and missing out on one of mankind's greatest inventions. One of the advantages of baking is that the flour actually cost less, it actually requires less ingredients and fewer equipments, it's a relaxing activity, and with experience, you can have a cheaper and healthier diet. Ever since I started baking, I satisfy myself with .

Ingredients
Let's start with the ingredients. What you will need are just the following:
1. Rye flour - 400 grams
2. Water - 320 grams (or 80 % of the total flour)
3. Sea salt - 8 grams ( or 2% of the total flour)
4. Yeast (see alternative procedure for sourdough starter) - 6 grams

Most of the ingredients, except the salt and sourdough starter, I bought at Tomizawa Shouten (in Japanese), specifically the one near Denenchofu station.

Tomizawa Shouten Denenchofu

Rye flour

Yeast

Tools and equipment
The equipments you will need (or at least what I use since I don't have any baking tools) are spoons, a weighing scale, a cup, and a multi-function microwave oven (the common ones you will find in Japanese homes).

Recipe

1. Start by mixing the yeast, flour, and water in a bowl. Feel free to use any tool. As for me, I start by using two spoons to mix them all together. Once they feel mixed enough, I use my hands to stretch and fold the dough mix.

2. Add the salt midway through the process.

3. Set aside the mix for 3~6 hours in room temperature making sure that you cover the mix so as to keep the moisture from escaping.

4. After a few hours, the mix should have grown (as above). Transfer the mix to a powdered (w/ any flour) flat surface, for final shaping.

5. I'm not an expert in shaping at this point of writing this article, nor do I imagine myself becoming one. You can shape it as in the image in step 3, or you can divide them in two and form them like two baguettes. I also add mix seeds on the surface (flax seeds, sunflower, etc.). Set aside for 30 minutes to an hour (for further growth).

6. In my Japanese microwave/oven function, I can only set it up to a maximum of 200 degrees celsius. I preheat the oven automatically to 200 degrees.

7. Once the oven signals (by a long-sounding alarm) that it's preheated enough, score (slicing at the surface) through the surface of your dough, and insert the dough. Leave it at 200 degrees for up to 75~80 minutes.

8. Once it finishes, it should appear something like this. Not as pleasant as the ones you see in bakeries but it'll do as one healthy bread.

Using sourdough starter

Using the sourdough starter would require 2 additional days for preparation. The procedure follows steps 1 to 8 of above except that the yeast is replaced with a sourdough starter. The following steps are necessary prior to the steps above when sourdough is used.

1. Mix 20 g of well-fed sourdough starter (this means a mix of 50 g of sourdough, 25 g of white flour, and 25 g of water one day before), 40 g of the 400 g rye flour, 40 g of the 360 g water. In total, this comprises 25 % of the 400 g flour. Set-aside the mixture for one day.

2. This is exactly step 1 except that the quantities will have changed:

• Rye flour = 350 g (40 g + 10 g from the sourdough starter)
• Water = 280 g (40 g from the sourdough starter)
• Yeast -> Sourdough mix

3. Proceed to the next steps as written above.